Budgetgate And The 2 Trillion Fraud - Politics

I have watched the Federal government continue to embarras themselves in what is arguably one of the biggest executive scandals in Nigeria's history. But what has really gotten my attention is their very unprofessional and downright deceptive response to the whole quagmire. It has gone from the very bizzaire to the outrightly deceitful and I feel there is a need to put the records straight, especially for future reference.

The most bizzaire response has seen the ministers outrightly deny their own ministries budget like Shaggy singing, "It wasnt me". This has written a new chapter to the country's corruption story. If the ministers didnt write those budgets, then we are in a bigger trouble than we actually know. This means we have a government that cannot manage themselves let alone manage 170 million Nigerians. It also means all the ministers are shockingly incompetent. It also implies that there is serious monumental corruption going on in the ministries and government agencies as we speak.

Before the government apologists try to ram it down our throats that it is those around the president that are involved, let us not fail to remind them that some of the most embarrasing corruption and fraudulent items in the budget came from the presidency. Yes, you heard it right! It came from the acclaimed squeaky clean, saintly PMB.

But let us get down to the real business of the day. I am really woried that even the opposition and many analysts of the budget have missed the biggest issue yet.

What is the biggest issue with the 2016 budget?

The biggest issue with the 2016 budget is this: If you go through the budget, you will suddenly realise that about 2 trillion Naira in the bugdet are made up of fraudulent and ghost line items. That means that of the over 6 trillion budget presented by Buhari, the real and credible budget is just around 4 trillion. The rest is fraud and money meant to be shared by government and party cronies. This is most alarming when you realise that about 2 trillion is going to be sourced as loan to fund the budget. That means, Nigeria is trying to source for loans to fund coruption.

We are about to take loans to fund massive theft!

Somethig really twisted happened in some of the ministries in their bid to cover up their fraudulent items. When the budget was first released by the BudgtIT folks (credit to them for exposing the budget from the unset and preventing the FG from getting away with the fraud), and then withdrawn, this is what some of the ministries did.

To fix the fraudulent items in the budget, what the ministries and agencies (including the presidency) did was either:

1. Remove the fraudulent line items that have been exposed but distribute the amount from those line items among the other items. For example, Lets say a ministry budgeted 200 million for computers, 300 million for tables and 500 million for boreholes (That is a total of N1 billion). If, for example, the table budget was flagged as fraudulent, they will simply remove the table item of 300 million but share that 300 million between the computers and borehole budget. So they will return the budget with the 1 billion total unchanged, but this time, the computers budget will be 400 million and the borehole will be 600 million. This is a very shocking display of fraud and skilled corruption. If the computer budget is flagged as fraudulent, what should have simply happened is that the ministry should have removed the computer budget and returned the budget as 700 million, not 1 billion.

2. Remove the fraudulent line items and assign the value as new budget items. In this case, whole new items where inserted into the budget altogether to make up the amount removed. What is again alarming is why they must spend the funds. The concept of a budget is not to create items that must be purchased. It is not a blank check for government officials to go on a shopping spree

It is really worrisome that the Buhari government is hell bent on spending the over 6 trillion even when it is not justifiable. This is why we must reject any budget that is above 4.5 trillion Naira. Any budget that comes back from the FG that is above 4.5 trillion is definitely a crooked budget. This is also why we must insist that the FG should not borrow any funds for now as any funds borrowed to fund the budget is actually funds borrowed to line the pockets of government cronies.

Any budget that comes back from Buhari that is above 4.5 trillion is fraudulent!

I have seen some APC youths go on social media to celebrate the sacking of the DG of the budget office. Question is, what does that take away from the monumental budget fraud? Was the budget of the ministries written by the budget office. The ministers have all gone to the NASS to defend their budgets. I didnt see anyone whose budget was written by the budget office and the ministers are all walking free and laughing at the rest of us.

Sacking the DG of the budget office is just late damage control and trying to get a fall gyuy to take the heat. The ministers who all presented fraudulent budgets are still roaming free and laughing at the rest of us. And please stop telling us the presidency put it up for scrutiny!! We all had several copies each before they attempted that damage control. The scandal had already trended as #BudgetOfYams for several weeks before that weak attempt by the President's spokeman to make us believe they wanted it scrutinised! That train had left the station since December!
This is a most shameful note in the history of this country but we must continue to call out Buhari and his governance team. If we sleep for one moment, we might all wake up one day to see some rich Arab sheik has bought the country and has the C of O.