by Adeniyi Abdul

The 2012 budget is turning out to be quite the controversy cow, what with the impeachment threats from the House of Reps and statements and counter statements from the president’s side.

The latest person to wade into the topic is senior special assistant to President Goodluck Jonathan on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe. Okupe, while speaking to journalists in Aguja reiterated statements made by minister of Finance and co-ordinating minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala about the lack of feasibility of the demands of the House for the budget to be implemented 100 percent.

“I see the current misunderstanding between the members of the NASS and the Federal Government, especially the minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, as something that is not very healthy and not necessary,” Okupe said on Wednesday.

“The Assembly is saying that because money has been budgeted, it ought to be released as per the quarter it is due. Now, this is fiscally unadvisable and no serious manager of nation resources will dispense money in that manner. I want to bring up the fact that there is a budget deficit of over a N1 trillion in the budget,” he continued. “The implication of which is that some part of the money required to fund the budget will be borrowed.”

“There are issues about account receivable from the NNPC and so on and it is not always a free flow. But what is true is that there is no department or ministry in Nigeria today that is unable to perform because it lacks fund. Virtually all of them still has substantial fund stashed in their Capital Budget Accounts with the CBN.”

“This budget, if we go by what the House of Representatives claimed that all that the FG has done by July 30 was 34 per cent implementation, that means that the FG has utilised 34 per cent of the budget in just two and half months,” he said.

“A budget is supposed to be for a whole year. That means that in the next nine and half months, even going by the same pace, it would have hit 70 per cent.”

Dr. Okupe has hit the ground running, we see.