of ATMs

The president called the bluff of the LOC of the 2009 FIFA U-17 world cup last week and saved Nigeria N26.5B; yep thats Billion.

One week ago the FIFA U-17 Nigeria LOC like the “chop and clean mouth” KOJA, presented a bill of N35.5b to host the FIFA U-17 world cup in Nigeria in 2009. Hmm the president then told them, he did not have the cash with him right now, but that they should come back "tomorrow". And magically the figure dropped by 228% to N9billion. The president has now oked the event. See an advantage of going slow.

So the obvious question is what did they slash? Did they slash new stadia or did they slash their commission? To put this in perspective, this amount to host a junior world cup Nigeria has won three times is more than the budgeted amount for either health or education in the 2009 budget. So in essence, we are putting football over educating our kids and keeping the populace health. Tells you where our priorities are. I had expressed the fear ago that this tournament was going to be another ATM scheme; thankfully Yar Adua has changed his “PIN” number.

But why stop there, let Yar Adua call the bluff of the legislators who have withheld ascent on the 2008, yes 2008 supplementary budget of N683 Billion. Can someone explain to me how we are discussing 2008 budget in November 2008?

This country is now a big ATM. This week we heard the Minster of Agriculture and Water resources tell us that N24 bllion was spent on boreholes between 2004 and 2006, the problem however is that the boreholes are untraceable ie they don’t exist.
Today we have just heard that the 2009 budget is for N2.68 trillion, that’s trillion, the same ministry of Agriculture and Water resources is allocated N80.9B, health and education combined get N58 Billion. If you add Universal Basis Education, the combined figure is N98B.

Another interesting allocation is the Niger Development Development Commission with N34.9B while the Federal Capital territory gets N30.6 billion. So an agency managing the entire oil producing areas (seven states) gets N34B, and one state or territory gets N30B. hmmm one hope then that the excess sum that will be spent on the development of the Niger Delta will be allocated in the mint new Niger Delta Ministry.

The oil price benchmark is fixed at $45. In my view this leaves very narrow wriggle room for saving of any excess crude, ie if oil drops to $50 (which is a possibility) we can only save $15 per barrel to put in any excess crude account. I digress, Point is this is a time for belt tightening; we cannot be involved in disappearing boreholes or Peugeot 407 car scandals in 2009.

The govt must show the way in honesty, prudence and when that fails Yaradua should simply seize the jokers ATM cards.

It’s our problem, we can fix it

Kalu Aja

Ps how did the minister of works escape the cabinet shake up? Has anyone seen our roads?