Varsity teacher decries full-scale adoption of World Bank's policies
From Mohammed Kawu, Bauchi
ALECTURER at the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, Dr. Sabo Bako has decried the high input of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) into the Federal Government's budgeting process as unhealthy for the economy.
Bako said the appointment of the Bretton Woods institutions' agents into key government's agencies had led to Nigeria's spending a chunk of its revenue on foreign debt servicing and frivolous projects.
He lamented that principles and policies that were supposed to inform and direct the content of budgeting in Nigeria were fully derived from the World Bank and IMF financial regulations and budgeting model.
In a paper titled: "Budgeting and Appropriation in a Democratic System", which he presented at the House of Representatives' Retreat in Bauchi, Bako said the model assigns a large proportion of the country's resources to paying, servicing and rescheduling foreign debt.
The balance, which he described as a crumb is shared among civil servants, contractors and politicians.
The trend, Bako declared, violates Chapter Two of the 1999 Constitution which states the fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy for which public finance is a crucial component.
Nigeria under the current democratic setting, he said, had not only been implementing the World Bank/IMF model of budgeting, but had gone further to recruit its officials to man the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank to implement their policies without recourse to the nation's sovereignty.
According to the don, while the foreign debtors take 50 per cent of the budget, the rest goes to selective administrative economic and social sectors.
Bako said politicians, contractors and civil servants who dominate these sectors only account for two per cent of the Nigerian population.
He recalled that in the 2002/2003 budget, Nigeria allocated 30 per cent of its total earnings to debt servicing only, 50 per cent to administration, economic services 1.9 per cent and social and community services, 28.5 per cent.
Bako observed that the so-called 40 per cent budget implementation of the Federal Government in the last five years could not be monitored, accounted for and evaluated by the National Assembly.
The don regretted that recent Nigeria's governance and corruption survey had put the persons dealing with raising of national revenue and its expenditure as the most corrupt and richest in the country. He accused the National Assembly of simply authorising such budget by taking a handout from the rot.
"No one except those directly in charge can tell you how much Nigeria collects as its yearly revenue, how much is directly stolen by them and how much goes into the consolidated national revenue account", he said.
Bako said the lame legislature simply watched the lack of accountability and transparency in the business of revenue generation and disbursement.
