Heads to roll as Buhari goes after ‘budget mafia’

A cartel in the federal civil service, referred to as ‘budget mafia’ said to be made up of top civil servants who smuggle extraneous items into the budget, has caught the attention of President Muhammadu Buhari, who is set to show them the way out.

This cartel may have caused some embarrassment for the Buhari administration as they are said to be the ones responsible for inflating the amount to be spent on the State House clinic, and some communication equipment in the budget.

It was gathered that many of the items in the 2016 budget presented by Buhari that drew the ire of the public managed to sail through the budget that has over 6000 items because supervision was made even more difficult with the uncooperative attitude of the senior bureaucrats and their subordinates who were themselves expected to be involved in the supervisory process.

They allegedly discarded Buhari’s proposals reflecting financial prudence and frugality in the preparation of the 2016 budget currently before the National Assembly.

Government sources conversant with the budgeting process disclosed that as soon as speculations became rife that the presidency was considering a budget in the region of about N8 trillion in order to significantly increase capital expenditure, “the budget mafia” in the civil service, “who consider the period of budgeting as their time of massive opportunity to arrange the stealing of public funds”, came up with a proposal of about N9.7 trillion for recurrent and capital spending.

A N6.08 trillion budget for the fiscal year 2016 was however presented to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari  last December after initial figures proposed by bureaucrats in the civil service had been slashed.

“Members of the Budget Mafia are spread across all Ministries, Departments and Agencies. When the budget was being compiled, they frustrated all the deadlines set by the presidency.

“Despite the vigilance of Buhari and his cabinet, it was embarrassing to the government to hear of some smuggled items, a presidency source said.

It was gathered that the resistance by the budget mafia in the civil service started with the adoption of the zero-based Budgeting as against the usual envelope and incremental system used in the past by the federal government.

The zero-based budgeting involves justifying needs and costs as against the yearly incremental approach that transfers expenses from previous budgets with added upward reviews. The old system having been mastered by bureaucrats and past public officials engenders corruption.

Read also: Analysis… #Budget 2016: Where will N4.9tn tax revenue come from?

Although the presidency had been planning on the adoption of the zero-based budget with top officials from the then Budget Office and then National Planning Commission few months after taking over power, yet when both agencies were merged into the new Ministry of Budget and National Planning and a minister, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, was assigned to the ministry, the civil servants simply refused to properly brief him on the zero-based budget and efforts already made.

For weeks after the minister was sworn in, the bureaucrats were said to have continued to  plan on the old budget model, thereby stalling the decision to use the zero-based budget until the new minister found out from the presidency. The budget mafia had projected that the presidency would be forced to abandon the zero-based budget due to time constraint.

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