by Everest Nwagwu
“The newspaper is a greater treasure to the people than uncounted millions of gold.”
Henry Ward Beecher
“Were it left to me to decide if we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Thomas Jefferson
Every year since 2012, I always review the national budget, today, however, I would like to look at the budget for newspaper for the State House, which is N28.3m. I know we as citizens are quick to condemn every act of the government due to years of abuse and mistrust between the governing and the governed. This piece is my attempt to look at this newspaper item objectively as much as I can.
Firstly, let us break this down, it means the presidency this year will buy/read 387 newspaper daily at N200 per newspaper that will amount to N77,534 daily!! While the ability of any human to read 387 newspapers daily can be debated, let me also state that reading newspapers also helps the president to keep abreast of news his aides would have hidden from him. However, president Buhari is not your normal president, he has been accused of not having an O’Level certificate but that is not a requirement to read a newspaper; my 10-year-old nephew reads newspapers and he is just in JSS1. Where would a president find time to read 387 newspapers in a day? Assuming it takes him 30mins to read a newspaper (which is unlikely) the president will be using over 19hrs in a day to read newspapers!!! Please don’t scream corruption yet, this is a presidency that is filled with knowledge seeking men who want to be informed.
Secondly, in my days in the university, newspaper houses drop copies of their newspapers at different faculties and the library, they do this daily and these copies are called complimentary copies. It is given out free. Does it mean that Aso Rock Villa does not get complimentary copies of every national daily? Please don’t be quick to jump into conclusion that the money is not used to buy newspapers, no please, I believe in democracy. Consequently, the presidential spokesmen have informed us that the president reads the cartoon section of the newspaper, not the headline, not sport, not business news, not even crossword puzzle! Laughter obviously is the best medicine. If the president loves cartoons so much, would it not be cheaper to buy comic books for him or a subscription of selected funny channels like Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon etc? This is a fair suggestion that will save the country millions of naira.
Lastly, it is ridiculously perplexing and annoyingly shameful that a National Budget will contain such frivolity, it is beyond the understanding of sane men and women to comprehend why the presidency needs 387 copies of newspapers everyday (Nigeria does not even have 387 national newspapers!). It is almost impossible to justify this item of the budget, but it will still get passed, why? Because of the cabal! In 2016 the budget for this same item was N10m but now it is N28.3m, did newspapers start selling higher than N200? How can the presidency explain this abrupt increase of over 100%? Just like most items in our National budget since 1999, the outrageous budget for newspapers is here to stay just like that of kitchen utensils and state house clinic upgrade.
Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija
Everest Nwagwu is a communications executive and Editor of Myonekobo blog. He can be reached via @mrprezident007 [email protected]
Leave a reply