The Citizens Wealth Platform (CWP), a coalition of non-governmental organisations on business and economy, has urged the National Assembly to review the 2019 budget proposal with a view to re-allocate N74bn appropriated for frivolous and wasteful items.
This is contained in the ‘Review of the 2019 Federal Appropriation Bill and Estimates’ and ‘Recommendations on the Line Items of Frivolous, Inappropriate, Unclear and Wasteful Estimates in the 2019 Federal Appropriation Bill’ formally released, yesterday, in Abuja.
The Lead Director of the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), Eze Onyekpere, who read the 46-page reports, also urged the Federal Government to unbundle the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing into three separate ministries.
According to him, the government should consider increasing the Value Added Tax (VAT) from 5 percent to 7.5 percent as part of measures to generate funding for the government rather than engage in borrowing to finance its activities.
“The Federal Government should account for stamp duties which has accrued into trillions of naira at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The government should also review the Petroleum Production Sharing Contracts as recommended in various Nigerians Extractive Industries Transparency Initiatives (NEITI) studies. This will bring in additional revenue of not less than $1.6bn every year,” Onyekpere said.
He said there is the un-appealed decision of the Federal High Court in the Centre for Social Justice v Honourable Minister of Finance (Suit No.FHC/ABJ/CS/301/2013), where the court granted the FOIA request of the CSJ for the disclosure of statutory transfers and made it clear that no agency of government had the right to spend public resources in a way and manner unknown to the citizens.
He also faulted the Federal Ministry of Agriculture for dedicating billions of naira for maize, rice, cassava, corn, groundnut, oil palm, cocoa and yam among others for value chains, without details of the ‘value chains’.
He listed N50m ‘subscription to professional bodies’ for State House Presidential Fleets; over N19bn coded projects in the Office of the National Security Adviser (NSA); N990m ‘social media mining suite for the Directorate of State Security Service (DSS) and N1.7bn ‘political officers and standing committee in the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF) among others that should be reviewed.
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