Opinion
Throw Away The 2025 Budget, Get Ready For Worse
By Dele Sobowale
“Eggs in one basket….
Since 1973, Nigeria has been putting almost all its eggs in one basket – the basket labelled CRUDE OIL. Since the Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP, introduced by President (General) Babangida, rtd, governments had been warned regarding the dangers involved in being a mono-product economy.
Every government made the right noises about diversification; and every government has failed woefully. Since 2013, Jonathan, Buhari and now Tinubu have been persuaded by their Ministers of Finance, as well as other top economic advisers, that Nigeria could produce and export 2 million barrels per day of crude oil; and every President has failed woefully.
The 2025 Budget, which was premised on production of 2.06mbpd, is only two and half months old and already, failure to produce the volume and dollar revenue envisioned from crude oil has rendered the entire budget worthless. The dire consequences of the current disappointment will only gradually unfold later in the year. Several questions arise from what we already know about this year’s performance so far.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over again (and failing) and expecting a different result.” Attributed to the Chinese.
The first question naturally goes to the Presidents. Jonathan submitted three budgets – 2013, 2014, 2015 – based on the same assumption. In no single year was Nigeria able to achieve the target. While he could be forgiven for the first two years, repeating the same mistake in 2015, not only did not make sense, it demonstrates a common trait among our Presidents. They repeatedly make decisions which the ordinary man or market woman in the street would not.
As if to prove that party affiliation, age, education, ethnicity, region or religion has nothing to do with atrocious decisions, Buhari – APC, 70-plus, School Certificate holder, Fulani, Northerner, Muslim — succeeded Jonathan, PDP, PhD holder, Ijaw, Southerner, Christian. Two totally different leaders would be harder to imagine. Yet, for eight straight years, Buhari also presented budgets based on the same faulty estimates and he failed every year. Why? A School Certificate holder, with commonsense, should have realised by the second year that something was fundamentally wrong with the basic assumptions.
SPECIAL ADVISER ON PRECEDENTS NEEDED URGENTLY
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana, 1863-1952.
If there is anything President Tinubu has done that is most astonishing, it is his adoption of the 2mbpd benchmark for budgeting. Records, which are the same things as history, are there to guide us by pointing to the things which have worked and those which did not. Nothing has failed more repeatedly in Nigeria in the last twelve years than the 2mbpd projection as the basis for our annual budgets. It akin to a farmer, who annually lies to his family and himself about 1,000 tubers of yams planted; but, who, every year harvests less than 700. His problem goes beyond run of the mill dissembling.
“Nigeria’s oil production falls to 1.47m barrels per day”. Report. March 25.
Tinubu inherited the 2023 Budget, from Buhari, which was based on the same deliberately fallacious set of figures. By the time his government sat down to write the 2024 Budget, eight months actual production and export figures were available. Experienced and honest officials would start with the actual. Additionally, they had ten previous years’ records to guide them. What could possibly induce them to again project 2mbpd? Mental laziness or what?
The results are already coming in; and they point to another budgetary calmity.
Follow me on Facebook @ J Israel Biola.
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