As the National Assembly continue to assess the 2021 budget as presented by President Muhamadu Buhari, stakeholders in the agric sector has raise concern over several questionable items in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development budget.
Analysis of the ministry’s budget revealed the allocation of N100 million for the purchase of project vehicle with no specifications of project and the installation of solar street light Nationwide for N800 million.
Stakeholders during the analysis wonder if it is the responsibility for the ministry to along other things budget for the installation of solar energy across the country. Also similar projects such as road construction attracts the same attention, as they wonder if the ministry should be the one responsibility.
The stakeholder in a communique said the questionable items are parts of the spurious methods in which budgets are cast.
“The 2021 budget contains many of such budget lines that are repetitive, over-bloated, unclear and very challenging to monitor or evaluate. Most times the budget crafters purposely lump up activities in the budget lines just to make it difficult for even the best discerners to track and monitor the expenditure.
“These occur not only in the capital budget but also in the recurrent especially the overheads. The import of these in an economy that is grappling with over 70% of its population leaving below the poverty line is that funds that would have been efficiently and effectively used to provide services such as education, health, more food and power to citizens are lost. For monitoring purposes, a budget line item should answer questions of: what, who, where, how, when and why? Any that fails in these is questionable.
“President Muhammadu Buhari presented the 2021 budget proposals titled ‘Budget of Economic Recovery and Resilience’ to the joint session of the National Assembly (NASS) on Thursday 8th of October 2020. The budget is the second most important legal document of the nation after the constitution and this is because it is a tool for allocating scarce resources of the country to sectors of the economy on an annual basis.
