May 28, 1984

Nigeria: A Tale Of Two Budgets

For a regime that has proclaimed itself so concerned about the suffering of its people, it must be a good lesson to recognise where Nigeria's new rulers place their priority. Nobody ought to lose sight of the fact that under a military regime a country's defence budget becomes inextricably linked with the personal whims of the soldiers. By a Special Correspondent

Press reaction to General Buhari's recent budget has been overwhelmingly favourable. "Sensible Budget". "Sanity Budget" have been in the group of restrained adjectives to describe the long promised revised budget for 1984.

Since a budget proposal for 1984 was the last act of the Shagari Admini- stration before the military moved in, and since the state of the economy was given as the main excuse for the coup d'etat, it is reasonable to conclude that General Buhari and his colleagues did not think very much of the budget that had been presented to the country.

One had been hoping that when the Buhari budget does appear, it will shame the civilian administration in its radical approach to the problems that beset Nigeria.

Surprise, surprise therefore that the sole major difference between the Shagari and the Buhari budgets is the predictable one of defence assuming priority under the military.

There is a sense of deja vu and weariness about such a gesture that it is almost too sad for anybody to be angry about. As stated in the columns of this magazine, seven days after the Buhari takeover, defence budgets always rise under military government in Africa and it gives no pleasure that the Buhari administration is proving such predictions correct with such regularity.

For a regime that has proclaimed itself so concerned about the suffering of its people, it must be a good lesson to recognise where Nigeria's new rulers place their priority. Nobody ought to lose sight of the fact that under a military regime, a country's defence budget becomes inextricably linked with the personal whims and professional ambitions of the soldiers.

Thus General Buhari has allocated N569,244,100 to defence and N272,497,470 to Education Science and Technology.

Soon after the 31st December takeover, there were many reports about how much the country would save simply by dismantling the structures that go to support a constitutional democracy. Chief of Staff, Brigadier Tunde Idiagbon told a group of enthusiastic media executives that the Federal Military Government was going to save the country a staggering N400 million simply by the abolition of two houses of Legislature - the Senate and the House of Representatives and the staff members.

Everybody was suitably impressed about the fact that democracy was virtually too expensive for a country in such straits as Nigeria to be able to afford. Commentators expostulated on how a developing country cannot afford the trappings of democracy.

The suggestion was actually made that by the time the whole paraphernalia of constitutional rule was toted up, the nation will save enough money to make the IMF loan unnecessary.

The surprise therefore is that after all the "wastage" of constitutional structures had been eliminated, the difference between the Buhari and Shagari budgets is only 800 million naira. One will have to ask therefore, where has all the promised savings disappeared to?

The Buhari budget has been praised for its emphasis on thrift and the Shagari budget has been condemned for having been simply full of promises. It is difficult to ascertain whether the Buhari budget has already achieved the impossible by achieving its stated goals already right at the start of the year. The truth of the matter being that every budget contains promises and as the two documents stand, the only noticeable difference between them is the predictable one of the military placing more emphasis on defence than the civilians.

Even more surprising is the level of importance accorded to Agriculture, Water Resources and Rural Development by the military government, for at 24,649,870 naira it ranks barely a third of the estimates for External Affairs.

This, in a country that has identified the importation of food as the single most debilitating factor in diluting the worth of Nigeria. And for a regime that has put the restoration of food self-sufficiency as a priority item, or at least, has said so in public.

But then a difference of 800 million naira between the budgets of an ostentatious, insensitive and squandermania civilian government and a low-profile, caring and thrifty military government must mean that a few things are not the way they have been made out to be.

WRITERS

The most hopeful explanation, one can find is that things are possibly not as bad as we all imagine and thus Alhaji Shagari was probably on the proper road. The most uncharitable explanation one can put on the phenomenon is that the soldiers are not their own men despite all the brave talk - the budget formulators and writers are the same whether it be for a civilian government or a military one. Or else the soldiers hold only one thing dear - DEFENCE, and having stood around long enough to ensure that it gets the due attention they believe it requires, they could not care what happens to other sections of the society.

One is hoping that for the sake of the nation, the other single economic decision taken by the FMG was dictated by reasons other than what the newspapers have offered.

The popular wisdom seems to suggest that the currency exchange was aimed at crippling forever the "corrupt politicians", both the group inside Kirikiri prison and the group outside Nigeria who were reputed to be holding millions of the old Naira notes.

One can only hope that the devastating blow dealt them is worth the amount of suffering being endured by very ordinary Nigerians today in the wake of the currency exchange.

The elderly gentleman who died in the bank queue, it is hoped, realised that his life had not ended in vain but that the group of rogues in Kirikiri had been punished adequately and for that he was willing to die happily

It is hoped that the confidence that the Naira enjoyed would still continue, for if that will also disappear with the blow aimed at the "corrupt politicians", then the rogues would have scored an unnecessary victory.