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Nigeria: Budget, Critical Tool for Devt - Obi
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Vanguard (Lagos)
14 May 2008
Posted to the web 14 May 2008
Vincent Ujumadu
Awka
GOVERNOR Peter Obi has described budget as a critical tool for development which everybody is expected to embrace.
Addressing a cross section of the people of Anambra State during his periodic interaction with them in Awka yesterday, the governor regretted that many people seem to be naïve about budgeting by trying to impose what is in their minds on the people.
"You can't do budgeting without involving the people. In our budget for this year, 70 percent of the estimate is for capital expenditure and over 50 percent of the capital budget is demand-driven. The idea is that since we are serving the people, we should budget for them. We cannot budget for ourselves. We try to involve the people through a clearly defined process in which we interact with the people at least two hours every month in the media to answer questions about the activities of government. We also meet with the traditional rulers and presidents of the town unions every two months and by so doing, we bring governance back to the people".
According to him, unless the people were fully involved, governance was bound to fail because everything done by government was about the communities.
He observed that it has not been easy creating what was not in existence, adding that the problem was that people had been used to certain ways of doing things which his administration has been trying to change.
In his speech, the national chairman of government civil society organizations partnership, Dr. Lanre Adebayor who was in the state to organize a workshop for community leaders in the state suggested that five percent of the budget should be reserved for community development to address the problems of the communities.
"If we focus on the communities as the centerpiece of the budget, we are also in a way laying the foundation for true development that is sustainable", he said.
According to him, budget is not just a financial plan, but also an element of rule of law, adding that once the governor signs the budget into law, it becomes the law of the land and everybody should be bound by the law.
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He also suggested that to ensure proper implementation of the budget, there should be quarterly governor's forum that would provide the state chief executive with the platform of discussing the challenges of government.
According to him, whenever government makes budgeting plans, a number of assumptions are put in place including expected revenue profile, adding that because sometimes the expected revenue is not achieved, government does not implement the budget to the letter.
With the quarterly governor's platform, he explained, the state chief executive could be in a position to explain to the people why certain projects could not be implemented even though they are contained in the budget.
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