Hi all,
I’m afraid that’s all we have time for.
Thanks again for all the questions and thanks to Stanley, Oluseun and Seember for agreeing to take part.
Follow the panel on Twitter for up-to-date reaction and analysis on the budget, the exchange rate and much more.
#AskQuestions if that is all you can do in the next 4 years. Don't let blind loyalty and those that believe in personality cult stop you.
— • (@StanVito) January 14, 2016
"Hapa Kazi tu"
— Oluseun l #OpenNASS (@seunonigbinde) December 6, 2015
Work and nothing else.
Should d security sector be made to disclose infmatn or will it be injurious to the security of Nigerians? pls share your thoughts #AccessNG
— #Budeshi (@Seember1) January 29, 2016
Updated
A quick-fire round of Twitter questions
@BudgITng @GuardianAfrica if the #2016budget is padded, how come the value didn't change?
— E M E K A (@EmekaEK) February 24, 2016
@EmekaEK There is nothing like budget padding, the 2016 budget was not properly prepared due to time constraint. @GuardianAfrica
— BudgIT Nigeria (@BudgITng) February 24, 2016
@GuardianAfrica @BudgITng Do we have any rating in terms of performance in implementation of the 2015 Budget?
— Oshioke Audu (@oshiokemamudu) February 24, 2016
@oshiokemamudu We have seen Q1-Q3 2015 Budget Implementation summary and it showed underperformance in terms of rev & CapEx @GuardianAfrica
— BudgIT Nigeria (@BudgITng) February 24, 2016
@oshiokemamudu *Rev = Revenue. CapEx = Capital Expenditure. @GuardianAfrica
— BudgIT Nigeria (@BudgITng) February 24, 2016
Money for universities
Guardian contributor The budget for education was reduced from N415bn (as approved for 2015 budget) to N406bn (as proposed for 2016 budget). Most of the clauses in the ASUU agreement is tied to the TETFUND (the agency that manages education taxes) and I think the agreement will be respected. No one wants another strike. I will be watching that with keen interest.
Lagos reacts to Babatunde Fashola
Guardian staff The Guardian is spending a week looking at life in Lagos. Can you talk a bit about how you exposed former state governor Babatunde Fashola. How did the city react? And what is he doing now?
Guardian contributor There was a lot discussion in Lagos on this issue. This issue was about the former Governor that spent N78m (390,000 USD) on building a personal website. It was so ridiculous. There were calls for accountability and petitions were submitted for probe. The probe has not happened and Mr Fashola being appointed as aMinister. He gave a response which was very weak. This shows that there is challenge with procurement systems in Lagos state and that public contracts are most overvalued. Such contract inflation highly undermines the effective use of public taxes. http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/10/ministerial-screening-again-fashola-clears-air-on-n78m-website/
Guardian contributor We stumbled on the procurement document published by the Lagos State Public Procurement Agency. After thorough examination of the document, we found that a lot of questionable contracts, including maintenance of the personal website of the Governor for N78m.
The initial reaction was of disbelief and shock, then alot of people became defensive of the governor. We focused on the issue of how public fund was being utilized and encouraged people to demand for answers. Mr Fashola's initial written statement and defence during his ministerial screening did not sufficiently answer the question. He blamed political detractors and said he does not sign any check.
The Lagos State Government pulled down the procurement document from the website of the procurement agency. Our letters to the Governor and the agency protesting the action was not responded to.
Mr Fashola is today the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, a key position that will be overseeing implementation of key campaign promises of President Buhari.
Updated
The falling naira
In the interest of transparency, given the alarming rate at which the Naira has fallen (in the past few months especially), is there a need to revise the budget to reflect the new Naira cost for the items listed? Because of course a refusal to do that means that the presiding officers of various ministries have a ready made excuse for not delivering on goods and services promised in the budget. OA
Guardian contributor I agree with you. There might be need to review the costing of items. Nigeria has refused to devalue the currency but prices of items keeps soaring higher. There will need to be some adjustment and most importantly also the need to source locally items that are in the budget. There is a strong discuss on the budget as an avenue to create local jobs. This will be critical.
Updated
‘An audit hasn’t been made public for 16 years’
Nigeria and Nigerian public institutions do not lack competence. An important organisation in dealing with public spending in any country is the supreme audit institution, in the UK the National Audit Office. Its effectiveness is a function both of its independence and of the will and ability of politicians to act on its reports.
Can the panel say anything about the effectiveness of the Nigerian supreme audit institution.
Guardian contributor In the last one year, our team made strenuous effort to engage the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation to discuss audit reports of the Federal Government Account for the last 16 years. We had very little luck with this.
The challenge with audit in Nigeria starts with the constitutions which mandates that audit report should be sent to National Assembly Public Accounts committee for review and approval but remained silent of what should happen afterwards. We used the Freedom of Information law to request for copies of the audit reports, the Auditor General referred us to the National Assembly who in turn said it was not their responsibility to make the report public. They did not respond to our follow up latter asking for whose responsibility it is.
In the last 16 years, no audit report has been made public.
Guardian contributor This two links will help you understand how BudgIT was been passed around when we tried to access the Nigeria audit reports. It is sad that President Buhari is not pushing for reforms at the Auditor-General office that requires funding and capacity building.
Updated
What about Abacha’s ‘looted’ money?
Are the recovered looted funds (from Abacha, Ibori, etc) adequately captured in the budget, such that their utilization can be monitored? Thank you.
Guardian contributor The government expects to recover about N350 billion of looted funds which will be used finance budget deficit. No detail was provided with respect to whose loot this will come from. We know that some recovery have been made from the ongoing Security Sector (DasukiGate) probe.
Guardian contributor Akin, you raised an important point about monitoring utilization of recovered loot. In the past, we advocated that recovered looted should be used for infrastructural projects and this should be clearly stated. There is fear (and justifiably so) that in recent past recovered loot was looted again.
So government must show transparency by clearly stating what specific projects the recovered loot will be funding in the 2016 budget.
Updated
Buhari and the budget, part two
To what extent does the budget reflect Buhari's campaign promises after an election that galvanised so many (especially young) Nigerians?
Guardian contributor There is a provision (N8bn) for National Job Creation Scheme but questions remain about how far this can go with respect to the campaign promise of 3m jobs per year. The government also announced a scheme to recruit 500,000 teachers and a N5000 conditional cash transfer to 1 million extremely poor Nigerians.
But I will say that more can be done.
Should Nigeria still get foreign aid money?
The question I want ask is why a country that should be able to support itself is receiving aid/donor money from the UK...?
If poor leadership and corruption had not happened, we might not need aid
Guardian contributor Nigeria is one of the poorest countries in the world. The revenue per capita is approximately $294 and with also poor socio-economic conditions. Nigeria deserves to be better and if poor leadership and corruption had not happened, we might not need aid today. However, we need aid to strengthen democracy, end poverty and also create a more equal society. Thanks to UK taxpayers. DFID has been so supportive.
Updated
What does the #budgetofcorruption scandal mean for president Buhari?
Guardian staff One of Buhari's big campaign promises was to fight corruption, presenting himself as a candidate of modesty and austerity. So what's happened?
Guardian contributor The challenge with this budget stems from the president's slow pace in constituting his cabinet which took 7 months. This delay meant that Ministers had just one month to prepare the budget or supervise the preparation of the budget. There was no proper scrutiny of the line items before it was sent to the National Assembly for debate.
Updated
How much is spent fighting Boko Haram?
What is the budget figure for the rescue of the girls by Boko Harem?
Guardian contributor No specific amount was provided for their rescue, but our analysis shows an increased budgetary provision for the fight against Boko Haram as we have illustrated in this infographics
There was clear attempt to procure more military hardware and improve welfare of soldiers on the frontline.
Guardian contributor Nothing specific. Nigeria spends around $5bn on security. It is a shame that the girls have not been rescued. This infographic can be of help. http://yourbudgit.com/infographics/2016-security-budget/
Updated
Who gets the money?
I presume 95% go to the government the other 5% go to the plebs .
Guardian contributor 70% of Nigeria's budget goes for recurrent expense - salaries, oveheads and servicing debts. 30% of the 2016 proposal is budgeted for capital expenditure. However, items in the capital items at times is highly suspicious or prone to fraudulent contracting.
Updated
The budget’s complexity rating (6/10)
Guardian staff I have a very basic question to start with:
On a scale of 1-10 how difficult is the Nigerian budget to understand? How does that compare with other African countries? And the rest of the world?
Guardian contributor I will put it at 6/10. The budget data is there and very for voluminous. Nigeria's budget is 1,810 pages as proposed for 2016. To look into that and find quick insight is a bit difficult. I must admit that the Nigerian budget is one of the most detailed budget in Africa with all the line items. Most African Budget - Kenya, Ghana - just have top summaries that communicate little.
Updated
Why citizens and budgets should mix: in five words
Guardian contributor My name is Stanley Achonu, the Operation Lead at BudgIT and I oversee the various programmes and projects of my organisation.
Informed citizens demand good governance
Guardian contributor My name is Oluseun Onigbinde, the Lead Partner of BudgIT. BudgIT is a civic organization that works to make public data most especially the budget, very simple and accessible to the people. My work is to ensure that more people know about the budget. We have a strong following in Nigeria.
Hi all,
Just to let you know that the BudgIt team are here.
Join BudgIT team and @GuardianAfrica now to discuss the 2016 Budget. https://t.co/cPCLqhavW5
— BudgIT Nigeria (@BudgITng) February 24, 2016
They will be answering your questions below the line, and I will be pulling the highlights above the line for the next hour.
Please continue to leave your questions in the comments, or on Twitter @GuardianAfrica, for the next hour.
Thanks!
The integrity of those holding Nigeria’s purse strings has been called into question by a mounting scandal surrounding Muhammadu Buhari’s 2016 budget.
Hundreds of copies of the budget went missing from parliament, delaying debate about the president’s proposals to raise spending and borrowing despite falling oil prices.
The scandal sparked allegations that some civil servants, dubbed the “budget mafia”, were trying to sabotage Buhari.
Adding to fuel to the furore, health minister Isaac Adewole took the step of disowning his own budget – claiming that it had been “doctored by rats”.
Health Minister, Isaac Adewole Disowns Ministry's Budget, Says "Rats" Have Doctored Proposal.: Health Minister... https://t.co/WVqPCFGJAH
— BPSR of Nigeria (@bpsr_ng) February 9, 2016
Campaigners say that despite the scandalous headlines most Nigerians have little idea how their money is actually spent.
The organisation BudgIT is trying to change this, breaking down the barriers of financial secrecy by feeding citizens information through simple tweets and infographics.
Which copy of the Budget do we believe as citizens?
— BudgIT Nigeria (@BudgITng) February 9, 2016
Last year the group accused former Lagos governor Babatunde Fashola of spending 78.3 million naira (nearly $400,000) of public money on upgrading his personal website.
"Accept Electricity Tariff Hike As A Painful Pill" – Fashola Tells Nigerians. In exchange for what? A N70m website upgrade bill?
— Dr. Njakiri Damages (@DrDamages) February 9, 2016
As a citizen of Nigeria what is the most important thing to know about your budget? How you can you make sense of the layers of government spending? And how can social media help disseminate the information better?
Three members of the BudgIT team have agreed to join us live to answer your questions.
The panel
- Oluseun Onigbinde is the co-founder of BudgIT and an expert in data visualisation and analytics. He believes in a society where citizens and the government have equal access to the fiscal position of the state. On Twitter @seunonigbinde
- Stanley Achonu leads BudgIT’s work simplifying information for the public with infographics and social media. He is a passionate advocate for open data as a means to connect citizens with government. On Twitter: @stanvito
- Seember Nyager set up the award-winning governance monitoring portal which uses the Freedom of Information Act and the media to hold the government to account. On Twitter @Seember1
Any questions?
The panel will join us for a live Q&A Wednesday 24 February between 1-2pm Lagos (12-1pm London) to answer as many of your questions as they can. Add them to the comments below, tweet them at @GuardianAfrica or email maeve.shearlaw@theguardian.com.
Updated
Does the 2016 budget adequately address the agreement signed between the government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities ( ASUU) after the last general strike?