President Buhari needs to pay adequate attention to the implementation of the budget, to make the difference he has promised.
While presenting the 2016 annual budget to the National Assembly on December 22, President Muhammadu Buhari pledged, "This budget will be executed to provide optimum value by ensuring every naira spent by this government counts."
Nothing but an optimal implementation of the budget can make the difference Buhari has promised Nigerians.
Since the inception of the Fourth Republic, progress on all fronts in the country has been hampered by poor budget performance. Hardly any year has recorded up to 50 per cent implementation of the federal government's budgets. The story is not different for many of the states.
The problem of poor budget performance has been attributed to various causes, which border largely on the question of transparency and accountability. The roots of the problem are mostly politician-made. They include sloppy budget formulation, especially, lack of credible income forecasts; extra-budgetary spending; inconsistency in actual and reported expenditure; and corruption and diversion of funds.
Buhari has promised to tackle the transparency and accountability questions head-on. To succeed, the Federal Ministry of Finance must ensure proper monitoring of government revenues and expenditure. The Bureau of Public Procurement, otherwise known as the Due Process Office, should be given fresh impetus to ensure adequate control of government spending, and there must be prompt financial reporting by the relevant regulatory authorities for transparency and proper monitoring of the budget performance.
