Tinubu’s first budget retains a bad trend: big govt over infrastructure

President Bola Tinubu is committing more money in his first full-year budget to government running cost than infrastructure, keeping with a tradition set by his predecessors, which prefers a big government over critical projects that could create jobs, quicken development and ease poverty.

The government’s N27.5 trillion which the president presented to the National Assembly last week is Nigeria’s biggest ever, and so is the budget’s N9.9 trillion recurrent expenditure, which captures everything from overhead and salaries, to statutory transfers.

Capital expenditure, which covers infrastructure projects such as roads, railways and power plants, comes down to N8.7 trillion, also the biggest in Nigeria’s history, but smaller than the government’s administrative cost.

“Having reviewed the proposed 2024 Appropriation Bill breakdown, it’s unfortunate that the administration has continued with some harmful budget practices from previous regimes that have fostered corruption, underdevelopment, unemployment, and multidimensional poverty,” said Budgit, an organisation that tracks government spending, about the budget’s general structure.

The organization said the Tinubu administration, like its predecessors, failed to disclose details of specific spending by institutions such as the National Assembly, and urged a review.

But a major setback for the budget is the emphasis it places on spending that will touch on only a little percentage of Nigeria’s over 200 million people.

The huge non-debt recurrent budget comprises personnel, overhead, pensions and gratuities, service wide votes and statutory transfers. Its beneficiaries, amongst them government workers and retirees, make less than 10% of the population.

A promise never kept

Successive governments have pledged but failed to raise capital expenditure above the recurrent, with the aim to finance projects capable to impacting more people.

Former President Muhammadu Buhari said Nigeria would require N348 trillion to develop infrastructure in the next 10 years, with the private sector expected to provide 85.7 percent of the amount. That means the government will need to spend N50 trillion.

The current pace of capital budget allocations makes it more difficult to reach that goal, analysts say. During the budget presentation, Tinubu said he will give attention to completing infrastructure projects and building new ones.

“The budget proposal meets our goal of completing critical infrastructure projects which will help address structural problems in the economy by lowering the costs of doing business for companies and the cost of living for the average person,” the president said.

He promised to leverage private capital for big-ticket infrastructure projects in energy, transportation and other sectors.

“This marks a critical step towards diversifying our energy mix, enhancing efficiency, and fostering the development of renewable energy sources,” he said.

But the budget shows the administration’s priorities are hardly different from its predecessors.

A Pluboard compilation shows that since at least 2018, the cost of government has grown as the government increases national budgets. Capital expenditure continues to lag.

The Tinubu budget only reduced the gap between the two spending to its narrowest since 2019.

Here is the data showing total budget, capital and recurrent and the difference between capital and recurrent.