Public budgeting specialist, Dr. Emeka Ejikonye has said that the foundation and approach of budgeting in Nigeria are fundamentally flawed.
He said this while speaking with ARISE NEWS on Wednesday in an interview, discussing budgeting in Nigeria.
According to Dr. Ejikonye, the country’s fiscal framework lacks a clear policy direction.
“The whole foundation and approach are flawed. Who is talking about public policy? The President came into office with a policy statement: “Renewed Hope.” But what are the public policy programs that the budget is meant to fund? Budgeting in Nigeria is not playing the contemporary role it should.
“We are stuck at a point in the evolution of budgeting where it is seen only as an instrument for managing public finances. We aren’t asking the critical policy questions:What are we spending this money for?How do the people benefit from this? National development is achieved through public policy programs, not just by throwing money around without a clear destination,” he argued.
Dr. Ejikonye further said that said correcting the system requires shifting from simply managing finances to managing institutional resources in order to achieve clear public policy objectives.
“We must move from managing mere financial resources to managing institutional resources to achieve public policy objectives,” he stated.
Speaking on Nigeria’s constant reliance on borrowing, the Public Budgeting Specialist said it reflects a distortion of modern public budgeting principles.
“It’s a caricature of the concept of modern public budgeting. In Nigeria, we are running multiple budgets simultaneously. There was a time when, in December, civil servants would rush to spend unexpended funds because they would otherwise return to the chest on December 31st. What has happened to that practice? We are just moping around. The system is fundamentally broken,” he said.
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