 Welcome back to the breakfast on Plus TV Africa. A new report by Civil Organization Budget has uncovered corruption in Nigeria's 2021 budget. The report shows recurrent expenditure items disguised within the capital budget. And budget says this is widespread. An example is a 40 million Naira allocation for the Ministry of Information Meetings, which is included as capital spending. In all, 2.87 billion Naira was allocated to 112 items for meetings and wrongly labelled as capital expenditures just as 2.5 billion Naira was budgeted for advocacy, awareness and sensitization, and put under capital expenditure. Budget founder, is here with us. Good morning, Mr Onigbide. I can hear you, yes. Good morning. It's a pleasure being here this morning. Thanks for joining us. We also have an economist, Mr Ken Ife, joining us. Good morning to you, sir. Thanks for joining us. All right. Good morning. Thanks for inviting me. All right. So, Mr Onigbide, you're the founder of Budget and beginning with this whole analysis. Well, may I ask what the processes were? The processes that were involved in the audits of this budget? So, we have a team of data analysts and experts whose work is to comb the budget from the first line item to the last one. There are over 19,000 line items in the budget, so we pay attention to everything. We also have a software that guides us in doing this. And one of the things we first look at is to check the classification of items, which is what you've said. Because you would hear that the capital expenditure is possibly 30% of the budget. But you also want to integrate that clearly to be sure that items that are placed as capital items are actually capital items. So, one of the things we do is to look into the budget from the beginning to the end and review and analyze them and the resetting that they are doing the right thing. And when we looked into that budget is when we found many things. When we have found capital budget padding, where people just take valid items and liberate them as capital projects, and which has a direct impact on the people or has a long lasting effect on the people. The second thing you see, again, is a mismatch between institutional mandates and capital projects. So you have a Ministry of Forestry that is trying to deliver solar lighting projects, but also an institution around forestry delivering solar lighting projects, or some money that is also on human rights, doing different work on sensitization, doing even sensitization of delivering solar lights. I mean, so many things, just a mismatch between what exactly ministry should do and that. Then you see duplication of project, a single project with the same budget code and be repeated over and over and over. And we believe that the budgeting process should have been better improved beyond this. We should not be at this level at this time. There should be a better way to come in the budget and ensure that we are doing the right things. You know, Nigeria has a revenue problem, but what our analysis has shown is that Nigeria also has an expenditure efficiency problem, which is we also spend in the little we have, which is underpinned by significant debt on free volos items, which should not be at the end of the day. All right. Ken Ife, I'm going to bring you in now. You're an economist. For a long time, we've talked about budget padding. The former national assembly headed by Bukalasa Arkeo was the last time that we had a big conversation on it. So seeing all of this now, what does this all mean for you? And then second, how dangerous is this that we keep having these repeated figures here and there and complete lack of a blockage of leakages in Nigeria's budget? Well, I think let me begin by congratulating a budget because they are doing an excellent job. And I hope that the capacity that they represent to find a way of transmitting across the whole budgetary process or monitoring process. I know that the crux of the matter will be the level of the political way to deliver. And they actually try to do a timely to inform the budgeting process as they are actually coming to a progression. So sometimes I can't understand why the result is a lack, not much gets done. What I do find in the report, excellent report, where they have actually identified some of these items incorrectly placed in those and they get removed and they find their way back again into the budget. So it shows that there may well be a higher level of complicity that we are aware of. But I think it's very unfortunate, to be honest, that we are on this level of scrutiny. One is that when you say capital budget is 30 percent, you raise this a bit of hope because we now see that we always know that capital expenditure is the way in into creating jobs and ensuring that we keep the infrastructure spent at the right pace with the level of economic people. But when you find the current items finding their way into the capital budget, it does reduce the claim. And then it does show, you know, it doesn't show prudence, it doesn't show transparency, it doesn't show accountability, it doesn't show anything, except just a distraction from what we should be doing. Now, I also take exception to the fact that you have this ongoing padding exercise going on despite all the cries and news over the last six, seven years is still going on. The one thing that I wasn't very clear about is that when I looked into the report and found the irregularities and the consistency of these irregularities across a wide range of MDAs, I started wondering, do these have anything to do with the so-called constituency budgets? I'm not sure. Because when I look at the level of complicity, the level of duplicity, they are so accurate, the same numbers, the same descriptions, all repeating themselves. And I begin to wonder whether an investigation has been done to see whether this actually matches with the whole story of the constituency budget. And I think my colleague may have to Okay. So Cheryl, I'm bringing you back in here. Budget audits of the 2021 budget showed that there are 316 duplicated capital projects, was about 39.5 billion Naira. And the slides I've been showing on our screens says that the Ministry of Health is one of the agencies that has the highest number of duplicated projects, 13, 115. Where could the challenge lie? Would you say this is because of lack of interagency collaboration, corruption? Where is the challenge here? Yeah, I mean, I think when we first have to look at the budget office, there seems to be no audited review of the budget that is sent from the ministries, from the lining ministries to the budget office. Maybe in the midst of us to meet that December deadline, we have not expanded capacity to be able to really check into the budget and say this is things missing. And this starts from the budget officers that are in resident ministries. A whole lot of times, my lack capacity to be able to properly put documents together or even be able to even write budget items in the structured way it should be. But if someone's responsibility is collating all the numbers to be sure that all the items, including the palm circuitry of the ministry, including its director of budget and including the DG of the budget and all the people working. So our responsibility to check everything and be sure that online items are proper. But when you say single items can be reported, be repeated, you begin to wonder where exactly is the motive? Is this corruption? I'm not even starting because would you, would you as accountant general, would I pay a single same amount on one and 15 times or 10, 20 times and say this is the attempt for the budget? But I feel like as we go along with the budget, our next step beyond this median on also engage with budget officers of lining ministries if they are open to it. And we are doing this early because this is May and we know that another process for the 2022 budget has started so that we are able to salvage the budgeting process. This has been six years that this inspiration has been in office and things should have rapidly improved in the way our budgeting documents have been processed. But we don't see significant improvement. This 2021 budget was really a big leg now. There is, I'm sure Nick Binder you mentioned Andrea, you know, does have a finance problem. We're struggling with generating enough money. We continue to see budget deficits that have to be backed up by loans. It would make a lot of sense if we had an auditor general or an accountant general who was able to spot these things, block these leakages and ensure that there is no repetitions of these figures here and there to ensure that money that is meant for healthcare, for structure, for security is enough and of course goes in those places. So Mr. Kenefe, I want you to speak on the accountant general, the auditor general, and the national assembly that of course went through all these processes and approved this budget and gave a go-ahead for it. Well, what I would say without being too particular on each of these offices is that the work that the budget does is so critical because it does show how pervasive the use of technology can take us to the next level. It uncovers the corruption, it uncovers irregularities, and then what we are now saying is what is the level of political engagement and political expression of political will and the building of our extending of capacity for the appropriate authorities who are either appropriating this budget or verifying this budget or uploading the budget to the frame or even monitoring and evaluating to what extent can we rise to their level to ensure that the benefits of technology, the use of technology for this scrutiny is upheld. And this is very critical. And let me tell you, I'll give you an example. For years we have battled with access to finance to the base of our economic growth, including of course farmers. Let's see what technology has done. We have bank verification number BVF and then we also have satellite. Imagine satellite coordinates, GPS satellite coordinates has been recommended to be attached to this project so that anybody can pick up, go into the internet and go and say, oh, you said they're going to do this power station, so not power, this two kilometer stretch of solar power. Where is it? You can now zoom down to where that location is and see whether it has actually happened, because they have claimed the money. So but if they are totally rejecting the impression of base, then you resist a bigger lamb and I have to say to body, continue the fight. Just look at that focus. You need that focus. You are just one in one. All right, we're still having a conversation. We must have lost our guest there with Sherwin Igbende, the founder. You need that focus. A wider level of focus because I'm giving you an example of what is happening with central bank. The central bank has decided that since we have BVN technology and then we have satellite coordinates of the one hectares per farmer, right? Farmers can now have their money without having to provide So you can now see over four million farmers migrate from subsistence farming into commercial farming in a robust arrangement in which they are integrated into the national and international supply chain. And then you have all kinds of anchors in between. I mean, it's unbelievable. Now we can deal with diversification agenda in the sense of backward integration. We now do so many things are being addressed just because we have allowed technology to sit. So we have to continue because how can you have fiscal responsibility act of 2007 that prescribes what has to happen at the level of the federal government, state government and local government. And we have various provisions of this that are being violated. And then you have technology backbone that's on hitting this and then it is going on notice. So I said, do the advocacy platform so that we can all take it on from all angles and then bring it more to the level of scooting like the television debate that we have. I think it is the way to go. And I just have to do more in this direction. All right, Michel Wundigmi, Dave, some people would argue that Nigeria's budget never really is set up to work for Nigerians. It is simply an annual event that needs to be, needs to take place because that's part of what our constitution says. Are these simply things like this today, maybe also give credibility to that statement? Yeah, I mean, it might be true because when you look at the line items of the budget, it looks like Nigerian budget is just an extension of personal interest. Several line items you see that you, especially those classified as capital expenditure. In these austere times, you say that they have no direct effect on the people. I mean, there is no clear evidence that this is going to transform the life of the people in a significant way. And that's always going to be a problem about why we will not get the right optimization of resources in Nigeria. What we need at this point is resource optimization. We don't need time for valued items. We don't need, there is no time for us to put, to stop the budget within projects that don't chance from the life of Nigerians. And that's why when you look at the budget, you find about 19,000 capital projects. You ask yourself, to what purpose? I mean, would we execute 19,000 things in a whole year? Does our procurement system even optimize in a way to deliver this? And another thing we have seen is that most of these project items are also fragmented. So you have several items, almost 14,000 items, and less than 500 million. And you always do this just because you're trying to beat the procurement system so that you do it more internal. And you don't maybe go to the federal executive council and then where that's much more bigger oversight. Well, for me, I think the federal government should be the federal government, focus on the big pipe project that transforms the lives of people on the old scale, projects that state government, local government can plug into. Now you burden yourself with a 10 million dollars solar power system or a five million dollars street lighting system. All those things are unnecessary. Let us know that the federal government should focus on the big pipe project that transform the cities. And that's exactly what the function is supposed to be. But when we say we, well, after we've had an 100 billion constituency project that we say it's our own way of getting the senators or the House of Representatives to meet with their citizens, why are we still focused on this small and micro-sized project again? There's no discipline. That's what I'm saying. There's no discipline in the budgeting system. And it looks like everybody just put whatever they like in the budget and just take it to the whole process and maybe rob hands with the senators and rob hands with the budget office and everything just gets passed. We cannot get the Nigeria that we want that way. All right. We, of course, there's also parts of this conversation that have to do with security. There's about 10 trillion Naira that has budgeted for security since 2015, you know, that is part of this conversation. And of course, agencies that have continued to collect security budgets and add security budgets to their figures every year. So we'll talk about that after this short break. We have a security expert joining us here on the breakfast. Stay with us.