Founder of the Lagos Business School, Prof. Pat Utomi has described budget process in Nigeria as “a joke”, stressing that he prefers investing his “valuable time” into more profitable things than analysing the nation’s budget.
Utomi, who made this assertion when he featured on Sunrise Daily, a breakfast programme on Channels Television, claimed that there is no discipline in the way the government goes about the implementation of budget.
According to him, “Twenty years ago, I was one of those who began in January by analysing the budget and then you come to December, and you see the problem of implementation. And after a couple of years, I said this is rubbish. I am not going to talk about budget anymore, because we somehow do not have the discipline of the budget process.
“There isn’t elite discipline or in fact intent to do what is proper. So, I am not sure why I should spend valuable time I could spend doing other things discussing such a document. As a citizen I am interested in things working, but when I know things are not working, you don’t expect me to get into the justification of it.”
The political economist, who noted that Nigeria is currently experiencing a ” huge national crisis”, averred that the potentials of the country are being “lost because it is not being led”.
His words, “We are in the middle of a national crisis, huge national crisis, and people are carrying on as if it is just a few queues.
“What our country is dealing with is huge financing gap, we use to earn so much, we are now earning this much, if we pretend nothing has changed, then we will go into an economic spiral downturn that will just keep going.
“Nigeria is a country dying to be led and because it is not being led the potential is being lost.”
