Professor Pat Utomi, a Nigerian economist, doesn’t believe the country is doing well in implementing her fiscal budgets.
“Putting it in a very awkward position, I consider the budget process a joke,” he said during a program on Channels Television.
“January 20 years ago, I was one of those who began to analyse the budget, and by December, there were issues with implementation.
“We somehow do not have the discipline of the budget process, we go through budget as public relations exercises because they are supposed to be done and decision makers go ahead to do whatever they want to do,” he said.
According to him, “the goal is to achieve an execution premium, but if those who are responsible for it (the budget) really had no plan whatsoever to follow the budget, then, you are wasting your time.
“When those who are responsible for it, do not see long term goals in which the budget is just a piece in an unfolding set of activities that would reach a certain goal, there is no point of it.
“I think what has happened to us is that we got to a point of disconnect between the leadership elite, the political class, the bureaucratic elite and development aspirations of the Nigeria people,” he said.
Professor Utomi further said that the major reason why the budget isn’t working in Nigeria is ‘leadership’.
“There is low energy in leadership. we are not leading the country in the right direction.
“What the country is dealing with is a huge financing gap; we used to earn so much and now, we are earning this much, if we pretend that nothing has changed, then we would go into an economic spiral”, he added.
