Recurrent Budgets Of State Governments - Editorial

AS poverty bites harder on Nigerians, our insensitive state governments continue to allocate a larger chunk of their annual budgets to recurrent expenditure, to the detriment of capital spending, which is the aspect of fiscal policy that can lead to the provision of sorely lacking infrastructure and the alleviation of crushing poverty. This is why Nigeria remains one of the world’s poor countries. According to the latest figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the average poverty rate in the North is 67.0 per cent (Sokoto State has the highest at 81.2 per cent), while the South has an average rate of 54.9 per cent.  This is a very disturbing symptom of systemic leadership and management failures.

The  states with skewed recurrent expenses in the 2013 budgets include Niger State with  N71.7 billion for recurrent expenditure as against N21.06 billion for capital; Kwara State – N58.1 billion/ N36.3 billion; Adamawa State – N54 billion/ N39 billion; Abia State – N67.8 billion/N66.3 billion; Enugu State – N45 billion/ N37 billion; and Taraba State – N38.8 billion/N35.5 billion. Most other states are not significantly better off. But for a few states such as Akwa Ibom (82:18 ratio for capital/recurrent) and Kano (75:25), which have gone beyond the UNDP recommendation of 70:30 ratio in their 2013 budgets, they have to tackle the challenge of improper implementation of the capital vote to achieve massive infrastructure development.

The Statistician-General of the Federation, Yemi Kale, had, while releasing the figures, explained that 112.5 million Nigerians or 69 per cent of the population lived in relative poverty in 2012, even as states thoughtlessly devote huge resources to recurrent expenditure in 2013. But this must not continue as everybody that has a stake in the Nigerian Project should be deeply concerned about the unhealthy trend. Nigerians should therefore make sure their voices are heard in disapproval of the way state governors are misruling their people.

An analysis of the current state budgets shows that 2013 might not be much better for Nigeria in terms of infrastructure development as a majority of state governments still carry high recurrent votes, which is primarily a function of their unnecessarily large and redundant executive and legislative arms. While the military government of the Yakubu Gowon era had no more than 12 federal commissioners (ministers), the depressing fad today is for states to have a large retinue of commissioners, in addition to innumerable special advisers and special assistants, who depend on the recurrent votes of their states to survive.

Compare this to the United States, which had a cabinet of four members at inception (during the first administration of George Washington), and today has only 15 ministers (Secretaries) and eight cabinet-level officers, including the Vice-President. For the citizens to have a feel of democratic governance, state governments owe the people they govern the duty to reorder their recurrent expenditure in the years ahead. To keep on servicing a tiny section of the populace, defined by the Executive and Legislature, will lead Nigeria to nowhere; it is a recipe for an imminent financial disaster.

Many Nigerian villages, communities and towns today cut a miserable picture of neglect and abandonment, having very poor infrastructure or none at all. Most of the roads in the countryside are impassable and that is where most of the populace resides. It is the same with the basic amenities of life: there are very few hospitals, which, in most cases, have no drugs and personnel, electricity is lacking or is epileptic, there is a lack of potable water and access to schooling is limited.

But even with this distressing scenario, the 36 state governors continue to live in their cocoon of self-deceit and personal aggrandisement, paying little attention to the citizenry through the way they allocate resources to the executive and legislature, who constitute only a tiny percentage of the population. The greater number of the populace who have no say in how their resources are utilised continue to wallow in poverty while the governors, who are expected to deliver the goods, fail to build or properly maintain schools, roads, hospitals and waterworks.

Another striking feature of budgeting state governments have to address is the fact that even the little they vote for capital expenditure gets wasted through corruption, over-inflation of contracts and non-completion of projects. Tales of corruption abound of how governors and other officials loot resources while in office, making them unable to carry out their constitutional duties such as the provision of basic social amenities.

It is time the state governments engaged in soul-searching concerning how they expend state resources. To bring development to their domains, state governments must first fashion ways to meet the United Nations Development Programme recommendation of a 70:30 ratio capital–to–recurrent ratio in their budgeting. For a start, citizens, civil society and other pressure groups in every state must flatly reject any budget estimates being presented to their state assemblies by governors unless they meet the UNDP ratio.

To make their mandates count, governors must immediately start to reduce the number of aides they are carrying, as this will free money for capital projects. By continuing to spend highly in the area of recurrent budget at the expense of the capital vote, no state in Nigeria can move forward. The time has come for governors to reorder their budgetary priorities and implement them diligently.