Budget 2026: What President Tinubu Needs to Know
By Idang Alibi
Even as ordinary as I am as a citizen of this great country, I must confess that I still felt and still feel, sorry for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as he stood yesterday in Abuja before the two chambers of the National Assembly to present the 2026 budget to them as the law and convention of our country requires him to do. I did so and still do so today because I think he was engaged in a big sham, a gigantic hollow ritual which not many reasonable persons place any high dividend on. Why do I say so?
Since personal and public discipline departed our shores some years down the line, I think there are some things we should learn to do without especially if the cost us some money and time and effort to do them. One of such things, obviously, is the energetic preparation, hyping and presentation of our yearly national budget before the National Assembly. This is because not many take our national budgets seriously any more. In the past many used to wait anxiously for the declaration and passage of the annual budget. I do not think there are many people who still rely on the annual national budget for informed decisions on their business moves.
As Mr. President stood there saying all the good things he said that budget 2026 is, I can tell him confidently that some MDAs (ministries, departments and agencies ) of the Federal Government are yet to implement fully the 2024 budget even as the year 2025 is nearing its an end. What information did those MDAs feed drafters of budget 2026 with from which it was then planned? It means that the 2026 budget is a mere fulfilment of a hollow ritual. It is not a proper statement of the state of the country’s economy and a desire to improve things that were weak and need to be strengthened for better results.
As Tinubu stood in that hallowed chambers I felt sorry for him because I also remembered a story that was being told some good years ago to elicit nostalgia about how we as a country were running our affairs in a disciplined, orderly and progressive manner only a few years ago and how things have deteriorated so badly some ruiners came on to the scene.
The story went that it was during the time of Yakubu Gowon. Chief Obafemi Awolowo was the finance minister at that time. It was said that a prime minister from one of the countries of the Caribbeans was to visit Nigeria. It is true that in those good old days when such a personality was to come visiting, the finance minister will first look at the budget of the country and the line items devoted to visits. And officer of appropriate rank and expertise woukd be assigned to look at the books and volunteer an opinion on what preparations would be made to make the visit a flawless one that woyld bring glory to the name of the fatherland. That officer did his job excellently well noting however that in the course of his diligent search he discovered that the budget for such visits had been exhausted. He dropped whatever else he was doing at that time and informed the finance minister of his unfortunate discovery. The finance minister who was none other than the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo in turn informed the military head of state Yakubu Gowon that he thought that the visit could not hold because the appropriation for such an event had been exhausted. Surely, this is the type of happenings in our country then that inspired the great writer Chinua Achebe to write that great essay entitled There Was A Country, insinuating that that country no longer exists.
Achebe was saying that there was a country where things worked properly, a country where black people like us used to do things like other people used to do their own. There was a country where we used to hold our head high because we were doing things rightly as other people were doing do their own
In those days things were done in order. The budget was not a ritual. It was something done to aid the smooth running of government and to improve the state of things. It was like a national house to house all the citizens of the country and to provide for all the needs of the country. nothing was left to chance. Discipline, wisdom and careful planning were the order of the day. Government could not be run anyhow as some people wished. Everything must be provided for if not, certain things will not run.
Some fifty years ago, a civilian finance minister will have the guts and the sense of responsibility of his office to go to a military head of state and tell him the prime minister of an important friendly nation cannot be hosted because money had finished in the vote made for such visits? Yes. As Achebe had cause to observe, there was a country when such darings, if darings they could be called, could be made without any daring consequences befalling the darer.
That country was Nigeria some fifty years ago. Things were so until about some 20-30 years ago when the military people were in power and helped to worsen things and dragged us to a deplorable level until now, that they have broken down almost irretrievably. Who can come dare to go tell a democratically elected president that Nigeria cannot afford to host a foreign dignitary because the votes for extending such courtesies have been exhausted? Who can do that in our country now? Is it the president’s wife or one of his sons? Who will have the guts to go and say that to Tinubu or any of the other presidents before him? Which Chief of staff to the president will allow such an officer to go and ee the president about such an ‘omission’?
This speaks about the deterioration in our country. things have broken down almost irretrievably and who has the guts or the good heart to restore Nigeria?
In those days, budgets were laws. No president can do as he liked with the provisions of budgets. But these days, who cares about anything like that? But if nobody will or can, that person must be Tinubu. He is a finance man. He is a follower of late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Above all, he is known as a democrat. If he will not leave any legacy for Nigeria of today or tomorrow or the near future, let him leave a legacy of the national budget as an instrument for national reconstruction and prosperity. There is too much hardship in the land today.
