The Centre for Social Justice or CSJ, a civil society organisation, has discovered that the Federal Government’s proposed budget for 2022 is filled with wasteful items worth N227 billion.
They claim that eliminating them from the budget would help reduce the country’s rising debt and improve public infrastructure.
President Muhammadu Buhari presented the National Assembly’s joint session with a budget of N16.39 trillion for the fiscal year 2022 in October.
In its publication titled “Frivolous, Inappropriate, Unclear, And Wasteful Estimates In The 2022 Federal Appropriation Bill”, the CSJ said that Nigeria’s income is insufficient to cover necessary spending.
Presenting the findings to the media in Abuja yesterday, Eze Onyekpere, Lead Director of CSJ, also claimed that eliminating petrol subsidies would save the country approximately N2 trillion.
“Every available fund should be spent with the greatest value for money, tied to a high-level national policy framework and aimed at improving livelihoods, growing the economy, reducing poverty and inequality,” he said.
He said that the 2022 Appropriations Act should include specific language prohibiting fuel subsidies and “under recovery or any subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit by whatever name it is called or under any guise whatsoever”.
“This will save about N2 trillion and make the same available for the federation account. About 60 per cent of the savings accruing from abolishing the subsidy should be channelled to dedicated ring-fenced (statutory) expenditure in education and health,” he added.
