2020 Supplementary Budget: FG under fire over plan to use COVID-19 donations

‘It’s wrong to divert private sector donations for particular purpose to fund budget’

The Federal Government has been cautioned on the proposed plan to use Coronavirus donations from national and international bodies to fund the 2020 Supplementary Budget.

Recall that the Federal Government had on Wednesday disclosed that it will utilise private sector COVID-19 donations and other donations to fund 2020 supplementary budget.

The office of the accountant-general of the federation, via a new framework, said “in addition to the main CACOVID Fund Account with CBN,” President Muhammadu Buhari has “approved the opening of five COVID-19 Donor Accounts”.

The accounts, which will be opened with Zenith Bank, Access Bank, Guarantee Trust Bank, UBA; and First Bank, will be subject to “existing TSA arrangement”.

The framework is said to cover “Public funds allocated and dedicated to the fight against COVID 19 including the Fiscal Stimulus Package”.

“It also applies to all donations by corporate bodies and individuals to the Federal Government of Nigeria towards the fight against COVID 19 and the mitigation of its social and economic effects on citizens at large including donations under the Private Sector Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID) Fund domiciled at the CBN.”

The template will see Zainab Ahmed, minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning liaise with the National Assembly for the passage of the 2020 supplementary budget so the funds can be untilised.

“Disbursements of all COVID-19 Fund including those being collected directly by CBN and those domiciled with commercial banks shall be through appropriation,” the framework read.

However, stakeholders and development experts have faulted the move, while questioning the transparency that will be deployed in utilising the funds for the said purpose.

Speaking to the Daily Times on the development, a Public affairs analyst and founder of Vantage Network Africa, Akintunde Babatunde, said it was wrong for government to divert private sector donations meant for a particular purpose and now use it to fund budget.

“When the private sector donations were made to the Federal Government, it was specifically directed to fighting COVID-19 and not fund budget, as such it is not right to divert donations to fight Coronavirus and channel it to funding budget while we have not defeated the virus yet,” he said.

Babatunde added that budget implementation in Nigeria has been marred by corruption as there are no tracking systems to ensure transparency and tracking the process of implementation.

He said: “For instance, budget implementation of 2015 was only revealed in Auditor General’s report of 2017, so it means that untill after two years which the report is released that we will know what our money was used for as the framework does not provide for tracking implementation.

“The Nigerian situation is so complex that it is difficult for Nigerians to trust the government that they will use the funds in what they are expected to use it for,” he explained.

Speaking further, he said there must be increased proactive efforts by Civil Society Organisations, media and citizens to hold government accountable in the area of budget implementation and spending public funds.

A development expert and Special adviser, Technical, to the President, Nigeria Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (NASME), Chris John Mamuda, said the Federal Government ought to look critically to its huge cost of governance if it can successfully continue to fund its budget.

According to him, “there is an urgent need to downsize governance especially in overhead cost and streamlining the number of government appointees whose wage bill is so huge”.

He said the Small and Medium Enterprises sector welcomes the Steve Oronsaye report being revisited by the President in order to cut the cost of governance.

Speaking further, Mamuda however said in an emergency situation as the one currently, the government has lower revenues to deal with bigger problems which is why he feels they want to utilise the donations on funding the supplement budget.

“This is an anomaly and government have found themselves in a very tight corner which is why I think informed their decision to spend government funds.

“Afterall funding budget means that you fund critical Infrastructure and sectors like health. As it is, the crisis we are battling is health related which I believe should take majority of funds from Government coffers by now.

“Government requires a lot of funding to fight the pandemic and unfortunately we don’t have such resources now, and that is why they are looking for every means possible. Our concern however is transparency in spending these funds especially coming from donations.

“In time past, transparency has been an issue with governance especially with funds, as such there is a serious question hovering around transparency especially from those who donated the funds,” he added

Latest figures of donations to the private sector Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID) fund domiciled at the CBN stood over N27 billion.

The figure represents donations from the private sector coalition alone.

However, International organisations like the European Union, World Bank and other businessmen and individuals have donated huge amounts of money to Nigeria to fight the Coronavirus running into millions of dollars.