EDO STATE 2014 BUDGET OF RENEWED MISERY AND UNEMPLOYMENT The Edo State 2014 appropriation bill signed into law last week by Governor Adams Oshiomhole is an invitation to renewed misery and youth unemployment. The Edo State budget is a compilation of a motley of uncoordinated numbers, lacking in reality, full of sound and fury signifying waste and profligacy. The budget is not only an exaggeration of reality but an outright deceit when judged by the performance of the 2013 budget. The 2014 total budget size is N160 billion which is 3% more than the 2013 total budget size of N154 billion. Yet the annualized actual performance of the 2013 budget was a mere N107 billion which is just a little more than 65% of the 2013 total budget approved by the State House of Assembly. If the reality of 2013 was that gloomy why over-exaggerate the 2014 budget? Similarly the approved capital budget for 2013 was N88 billion but the actual achieved was just N45 billion a mere capital budget performance of 51%. Despite this glaring anomaly, the Edo State capital budget for 2014 is N86 billion a clear signal that track record of previous years plays no role in the estimation of current levels. For all intents and purposes the capital budget of 2014 cannot be expected to achieve more than 50% of its potential. From the very outset the Edo State 2014 budget document is not worth more than the paper on which it is written. There are other disturbing aspects of this budget. The Edo state 2014 budget has an inbuilt deficit spending of 30%, a clear indication that the state government is lacking in financial prudence. If the state Governor sought the views of his economists he would have known that such a spending gap is an invitation to a chaotic financial arrangement and he ought to have limited the deficit to not more than 5% of the total budget. The budget shows that for a budget size of N159billion the expected revenue is a total of N111 billion compared to N95 billion received in 2013; pointing firmly to era of borrowing and borrowing that will mortgage the future of the citizens of the state both young and old and impose on the state a destabilizing debt service burden. It is very likely that the revenue expectations would not be met and the deficit would then increase. This is a very tragic way of budgeting for a people. To finance the deficit the State Government plans to source N30 billion in bonds from the Nigerian financial market and source N14 billion in external loans from the World Bank. No wonder that the debt service burden for this year is a huge N20 billion. Citizens of Edo State must wake to the realization that at the end of the term of this present government Edo State finances will be limping and the people will be totally short changed financially. The 2014 budget is a public relations document and full of duplicity. The Governor plans to spend N8 billion in the health subsector and says that the State will construct and install a Magnetic Resonance Imagery (MRI) machine and establish an Ultra-Modern In-Vitro-Fertilization (IVF) Centre in the State. Let us ask the Governor the hospital where this equipment will be installed. Is it in the now totally abandoned construction site of Central Hospital Benin? Lest we forget the construction work at Central Hospital was stopped nearly two years ago when part of the building collapsed killing the site engineer. A probe into the incidence indicted both the architectural and structural designs of the building that collapsed. The solution is to first pull down the defective building all together it was recommended. In 2014 Government plans to build three model schools in each of the three senatorial districts of the State. Education is a prized industry in Edo State. The people cherish education because it is a major instrument for socio-economic mobility. But why build nine new secondary schools when the existing ones have no teachers both in quality and quantity? The so-called educational transformation programme is haphazard. For example in a typical school with 10 dilapidated buildings the State Government only fixes a maximum of three buildings and leaves the others to continue to rot away. Why not do a total refurbishment of all the buildings in every school being transformed? Many of the schools have no teachers. Schools in places like Uronigbe, Evboehighae, Igueben, Ozalla and many others have no teachers. In faraway distant schools of 200 pupils only two teachers and two Tuesday to Thursday NYSC members are in the faculty. In schools of 400 students only 7 teachers are present. Instead of building new model secondary schools let the State Government equip these existing schools adequately with teachers and materials and provide accommodation for teachers who are in villages and in far flung schools. But the contractors in APC and their sympathizers in government want to build overpriced new schools and make money for the boys! The State Government took a new step in its game of grand deception in the 2014 budget. It says that it wants “to strengthen the agricultural sector and make agribusiness a viable proposition across all branches of agriculture”. The State Government has no idea of what it is talking about. If you want to develop agriculture in the State where is the road map? Where is the land? What is the size of land that the government has identified for this project? Is it a state farm? Is it a school to land project? Is it a fertilizer support programme? Is it based on small holders’ agriculture? Does the State now have agric. extension officers? The Edo State Government has no expertise in wealth creation or poverty alleviation. There is a great need for greater purpose and focus and more imaginative strategies to develop the State into what it was when statesmen like Brig. Samuel Ogbemudia and late Professor Ambrose Alli ruled. The 2014 State budget ought to go all out to design strategies and programmes to enhance job creation and stop the drift of Edo young graduates and citizens to a life of penury and misery. As it stands the 2014 Edo state budget is an empty document. The tragedy of this budget is that it will not create any jobs in the state just the same way the 2013 budget failed to create any job. In the entire budget there is no indication that the State economic infrastructure will receive any attention. For instance, there is no plan for an industrial estate that may attract small and medium sized companies to any part of the state. Thus the three senatorial zones are in total economic shambles and the governor has no clue as to how to address the problems of industrial decay. State government companies have been allowed to die. The government is busy with contractors and yet the young school leavers and hundreds of thousand s of young graduates being poured into the Edo state job market have no hope of getting anything from the state government. Bendel Brewery is dead. Nigerian Observer is comatose. Edo Line is bedridden. Edo Transport is being buried. The long proposed Ehor Fruit Juice factory is rotting away. The planned Uromi Cassavita plant is moribund. Where else can jobs come from? The State Government is lost and is only investing in roads that cost five times what their true value is. The 2014 budget is designed to satisfy the APC contractors and their agents in the state government economic management team. Thank you. Chief Dan Osi Orbih Chairman, PDP Edo State January 30, 2014
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 20:16:21 +0000
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