In a video that is viral on Internet, I saw a television announcer happily introduced the TV’S Person of the Week who unprecedently donated $1 billion towards the tuition fees of medical school students at Albert Einstein Medical College, Bronx New York in the US. Her name is Dr. Ruth Gotterson and here is what she said verbatim: “I am happy to share with you that starting in August this year, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine will be tuition fee. For the first 10 seconds after her announcement of the $1 billion gift, you could hear a pin drop. You could see students’ mouth wide open. And in the next one second, when the reality of the life changing moment dawned on them, the whole hall went agog! Many jumped out of their chairs, tears of joy began to flow in their eyes, their hands jabbing and pumping the air, and you could see the joy in their eyes as they looked at one and other in amazement.
Dr. Ruth Gotterson, was a former professor at the medical college. She is the current chair of the board of the University College and had donated the humongous amount to give students free tuition indefinitely. How did she come about the huge money having been a teacher all her life.
Well, the source is very transparent. It came from the investments of her late husband and bequeathed to her with a seven-word sentence; “Do with it what you see fit”. A medical student at the occasion said, “Today really felt like the beginning of the rest o f my life, the future is bright…” What did Ruth Gotterson have to say? “I feel blessed to be given the great privilege of making this gift to such worthy cause”.
Opeyemi Bamidele ..justifying budget padding
On the other hand, and, here in Nigeria, another set of videos that has gone viral shows legislators accusing themselves of “blackmailing” the presidency to agree to an inflated national budget, and yet another set are accusing the presidency of implementing N28.5 trillion-naira budget instead of N25.5 trillion naira that was presented to the National Assembly for approval. The presidency reacted through its spokesperson, Bayo Onanuga the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy on March 10- 2024 saying the presidency actually presented a budget of 27.5 trillion naira to the NASS. He went on: “The national assembly, in its own wisdom, increased the amount proposed by the Executive by 1.2 trillion naira. In the spirit of democracy which allows give and take, president Tinubu didn’t withhold his assent to the appropriation bill passed by the national assembly. We want to stress that if the budget figure was increased and made to be different from what the Executive proposed, it was National Assembly that jacked it up in exercise of its power of appropriation”.
The National Assembly led by Senator Akpabio had no choice than to mandate the Appropriation Committee to defend the odious problem.
The chairman of the Appropriate Committee, Senator Olamilekan Adeola, a.k.a Yayi wasted no time in deploying a well thought out communication method in a video that went viral.
Unfortunately, the Senator representing Ogun West Senatorial district stylishly debunked the claims of Bayo Onanuga that the president presented a figure of N27.5 trillion naira to the NASS. By so doing, he tried to distance the NASS from the added or padded N1.2 trillion naira. The claim of the Senate raised more questions through.
First, why Is it that the budget and details of agencies such as Judiciary, National Assembly, INEC, UBEC, and Tetfund e.t.c were excluded in the budget document? Why did the presidency insisted that it presented N27.5 trillion naira and Senator Adeola told the world that the totality of the “entire MDAs budget comes to 25.4 trillion naira”?
Why can’t we know exactly how much is budgeted for National Assembly, Judiciary, INEC, e.t.c, and more importantly; the details? Another nagging issue is; what does he mean that “their budgets are not disclosed because they are statutory agencies”?
Googles.com defined statutory agencies as “official organizations setup according to written laws of central government. So why is their budget opaque?
To be sure, I spoke to a Nigeria trained and practicing chattered accountant who is also a US trained forensic expert.
According to him, “MDAs and all other statutory agencies can not stand alone. In the worst-case scenario, they would be attached to the presidency. As a matter of fact, there ought to be a supervising Ministry for each of them. They ought to submit their budget (income and expenditure) to their supervising Ministry that should also submit it to the Ministry of Budget & Planning “.
In the words of Syracuse Ohamese, the whole thing is “stealing by trick and position” ……. “Where government contractors are concerned, MDAs are blackmailed into submitting percentages of projects to the Chairmen of Appropriation Committees with a threat to cut down the seize of their budget if they fail to cooperate. A forensic scan of the document called appropriation actually revealed projects in excess of two hundred billion naira (N200 billion) tucked in the proposals of Ministries and MDAs to the credit of the Chairman of that Committee…..”. This act is what is called “budget padding”.
On the 6th of December 2022, Professor of Economics at Olabisi Onabanjo University, Sheriffdeen Tella spoke extensively on the issue with Sami Olatunji of Punch Newspaper especially on the consequences of budget padding.
Said he; “The major implication of budget padding is inflation caused by demand-pull as it puts more money into the hands of the public without a corresponding supply of goods and services”.
This is said to be devastating to the economy of Nigeria presently and in to the future.
Back in May 9,2022, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala revealed in her book that “fighting corruption is dangerous”.
She told the world how the ex-president of Senate David Mark, Former Speaker of the house of representatives Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal and the appropriation committee and other ranking member of National assembly added several controversial projects, as well as increased the 2015 budget to 17billion naira.
President Bola Tinubu- Looks way from budget Padding
Furthermore, he said, “the money which was added into the budget was 3 billion naira initially, but upon unrelenting negotiation, it was reduced to 17 billion naira.
It is brazened to say the least when over N200 billion naira is tucked away in the open glare of all Nigerians and N1.2 trillion naira is “added “to be share and then tagged “constituency project”.
Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, the Ekiti State Central Senatorial District Senator, said “…My appeal to Nigerians is not about what was said here today, am not going to deny that, but we have 12 months to implement 2024 budget, let every Nigerian wait to see whether any of these Senators who will not bring enough boreholes, enough solar street light, enough road constructions, and other project, training and empowerment that will be up to 500 million naira. That is it. If I got anything here it is not money put in my pocket. They are constituency projects given to my constituents and I am unapologetic about it….”
Gbam! There you have it.
Senator Bamidele a ‘progressive “doesn’t know how to lie. But he is not remorseful after the fact. The presidency, led by Asiwaju Tinubu has also choose the ‘path of least resistance’ by saying in the State House Press Statement that “in the spirit of democracy which allows give and take, President Tinubu didn’t withhold his assent to the appropriation bill as passed by the National Assembly….We want to stress that if the budget figure was increased and made to differ from what the executive proposed, it was the National Assembly that jacked it up in exercise of its power of appropriation”.
Meanwhile, in the 15th paragraph of the press release, president Tinubu was described as a “firm believer in the rule of law and constitutional democracy”.
Therefore, is padding the budget lawful? Is hiding over N200billion naira dubious projects in the 2024 budget also lawful.
What has President Tinubu given to the NASS and what has he taken?
It is on record that the former president of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo fought the dirty act ferociously during his tenure, while in 2015 the erstwhile president Goodluck Jonathan also resisted the National Assembly for a while and succeeded in negotiating down the added 20 billion naira to 17 billion naira.
So, what is the ‘Progressive” APC government doing about it? As the leader of the APC party, will the president call the Senators in his party to order?
Or will he continue to see the picture of 2027 election fund being painted for him as the reason for the looting?
In the spirit of holy will, the incumbent government of Central Bank of Nigeria,CBN,has so far been exemplary.
The recent achievement of the highly dedicated man cannot be missed. He has so far completed the payment of all the forex backlogs.
Not only that, he did it in a record time to redeem the nation’s integrity in the world place especially in view of the fears been nursed by investors, he did it transparently. However, I mentioned Yemi Cardoso’s feat here mainly because of his transparent attitude.
Note that the claims were $7 billion. He embarked on a forensic audit and the team detected $2.4 billion(3.5trillion naira) invalid claims?
Under his watch, a lot financial policies will take root and grow the economy, that is if other parts of the government will be put in check by the Asiwaju.
Mrs. Ruth Gotheson “said she is greatly privileged to give to a worthy case. She gave $1 billion. This is equivalent to the trillions being creamed off Nigeria by the National Assembly.
We hear in the video of Senator Opeyemi Bamidele that Nigeria should give them 12 months to spend N500 million naira shared.
What he is saying is that we should keep quiet while they make laws,amend constitutions and also pretend to be electrical engineers, civil engineer and contractors.
What then is the constitutional role and relevance of ministries and MDAs?
The philosopher, Immanuel Kant believe that,” we become radically evil when we subordinate the moral law to our own self -interest”.
He posits (and I agree with him) that we never do wrong for the sake of doing wrong, but only for the sake of achieving personal aggrandizements.
The unfortunate aspect of the situation in relation to the subject of this article is that while the concept of “Holy will” suggests the wish to serve selflessly and to be kind and loving even at the cost of personal sacrifice, the concept of “radical evil” holds that suffering and harm to others is immaterial as long as people acquires more power and status to rule rather than to serve. Kant went at length to show that radical evil (as in stealing the common wealth) is a corruption that takes over the life of people leading to desires to act against the universal moral laws.
So, when a Senator stands in the public to admit illegality and at the same time says he is not apologetic of the very act in question, ls it not trite that his personal morals are in disagreement with Yoruba mores?
In the end, one worders how this evil of perennial budget “padding” can be stopped, seeing it is evil at radical proportions.
Can the Senators and House of Representatives members be made to hold village square meetings to explain why they corner the money meant for public good?
Where are the Civil Society Organizations now? When will the media recover from its cash-quake problems and what now is the relevance of Institutions like ICAN?
Mrs. Ruth Gotterson thought about a worthy cause and sees what she did as a great privilege.
How will you, yes you, describe what the Senators and Reps are doing right now; “holy will or radical evil?
