The 2022 national budget of Nigeria hovers around US$42 billion using the most favourable exchange rate in the nation. If you use the rate most of the citizens use, it comes down to $32 billion. In South Africa, the national budget for 2022 comes down to US152 billion: “Total consolidated government spending will amount to R6.62 trillion over the next three years…Additional allocations of R110.8 billion in 2022/23, R60 billion in 2023/24 and R56.6 billion in 2024/25 are made…” If you average, you get my number.
Of course, Nigeria does not typically have a 100% execution performance; we typically do 80%. If that is the case, it does imply that we are spending less than $34 billion. When you contrast with the relatively huge South Africa’s budget, you will get an idea that Nigeria is severely underperforming. (With the 36 states and Abuja, Nigeria’s total budget comes to $64 billion.)
More so, Nigeria has more than 3 times the population of South Africa. So, we are spending $34 billion for 200 million people when South Africa is spending $152 billion for 60 million people. Do you see the disparity?
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In Ndubuisi Ekekwe’s “3T2030 Plan for Greater Nigeria”, I have shared how we can inject capital in the Nigerian economy.
Nigeria needs to unlock vistas in innovation, powered by property rights to make capital arrive at scale. That is the point I made in the video below. It is only when we do that can we build leverageable factors which can compound to unleash real growth in the economy. As your honourable minister, my desire is to help our nation to the mountaintop.
Looking at 2,000 years of GWP (gross world product), I have seen how all important nations advanced, and they are unified by one factor. Nigeria, today, does not have that factor, and unless we do, we will not transition to prosperity. I will work to bring that factor into existence and unleash abundance in the nation. I will serve.
Our problem goes beyond efficiency; we also need scale and abundance. If South Africa spends more than $110 billion on a population that is less than 1/3 of Nigeria’s population, you will agree that managing $42 billion is not the full solution. That national budget has to grow. That is why I am running for a ministerial position.
Comment on LinkedIn feed
Comment: If south African budget is $152 Billion and Nigeria $42 Billion. Prof. Ndubuisi Ekekwe explain to me, on what grounds is Nigerian economy the biggest in Africa? It seems something is wrong somewhere.
My Response: GDP is an aggregate of economic activities over a period. Nigeria has many of those activities. But most of those activities are severely informal. They happen but the government does not “feel” them via taxes which are used to fund budgets. Because they are not there, Nigeria does not have money to expend its budget. If you visit your village, you will see many mansions.
In South Africa, those mansions would be taxed yearly, making it possible to boost money for the budget. In Nigeria, no one does the same. In Nigeria, the national budgets are in the citizens’ hands and govt has no control.
Comment : Well, prof, Ndubuisi Ekekwe. The gap is too wide. We also know that the Nigerian government is not smiling when it comes to taxes and other internally generated revenues. Assuming we put a deviance factor of 0.5 or less to account for the generated revenue evasion. Multiplying this factor by our supposed generated revenue based on our acclaimed biggest economy in Africa. We can’t be talking $40b budget while South Africa is chilling with a $152b budget. Unless we conclude that some generated monies by our government which is more than South Africa’s budget are kept somewhere.
My Response: f you tax all lands, properties and farmlands in Nigeria, you will likely get more than $80B per year. Your LGA has no money to buy pencil but there are mansions in your village. If govt taxes those mansions as they do in South Africa, you LGA will have at least $5 million per year to start the year. Check your village market, examine the volume of transactions, imagine if govt takes its 7.5% VAT where the LGA will be. This is not rocket science.
Comment: Prof. Ndubuisi Ekekwe, I wish you all the best in your ministerial ambition. With due respect, I want to make an observation, the way South Africa designed its national budget is different from Nigeria’s budget, South Africa’s national budget is allocated between the three spheres of government (national, provincial, local) While Nigeria’s budget you mentioned in your article is for the federal government alone, not including the 36 States and FTC’s budget. Thank you
My Response: South Africa has a federal budget. Besides that, regions also have budgets approved by Provincial Parliaments. For example, this is Western Cape budget https://www.westerncape.gov.za/provincial-treasury/western-cape-budget-202122 which is different from the federal one http://www.treasury.gov.za/documents/national%20budget/2022/review/FullBR.pdf . The 36 states + FCT in Nigeria as I noted in the piece have a budget around $22 billion. But in that budget, there is an overlap since projections are linked to the group federal sharing from oil. So, if you just count and add states, you are double counting. My comparison is fair.
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Those who misinformed ordinary citizens that Nigeria was/is a rich country told a great lie, and it’s not easy to gather all those who already ran away with the lie and then retell them that it’s not true. That’s the first major re-education that is needed, because it’s hard to tell someone who is convinced that there’s food in the house to work, so you need to show him the empty store, with pots and plates washed and dried.
Again, our politics is disproportionately dominated by politicians who only know about spending (wasting), with zero knowledge in production. For years we have been cutting from the small cake, sometimes some return with rations that cannot even feed the kids, let alone the youths and older adults; yet we still don’t know how to bake a giant cake.
Our entire budget is not big enough to modernise just a sector like education or defense, yet we keep dragging the small budget as if it’s enough to put us on the path to greatness, our lack of ambition is both amazing and dizzying.
In which sector have we achieved abundance and demonstrated relevance in the world stage? With the level underperformance, you wonder who truly earn their pay cheque here.
We are sleeping on duty in this country, such a bad behaviour.