Why we adopted zero budget system, by Buhari

President Mohammed Buhari has said that the need to harmonise figures and statistics to generate concrete results for Nigerians is the key reason that his administration opted for the zero budget policy.
Buhari, at the 21st Nigerian Economic Summit with the theme: “Tough Choices: Achieving Competiveness, Inclusive Growth and Sustainability,” explained that audit of past dealings by government agencies showed wide discrepancies in amount of revenue and expenditure, making it difficult to track transactions by government.

The president who was represented at the event by the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, noted that the budget office is currently working closely with the National Planning Commission (NPC) to draw up medium and long term action plan for the country to cater for the poor.
“In the past, we have budget that has no policy driver, that is why we decided to have a policy to drive it. The budget office and NPC are working together to draw medium and long term plans and then define properly policies that will drive the future budgets. The policies will depend a great deal on the manifesto of the party, which will be in line policy direction of government in the budget.
We are doing a Bottom Up plan for our economic planning, taking into account our large number of extremely poor,” he said.
On the issue of accountability and transparency, the president said that government is putting in place, a mechanism where each public servant is to
account for their actions and interface with the public.
“We are working with various institutions not only to assess them but to show them how the reforms should go,” he said.
He added that Human Capacity Development in Public Service is a major component of the reform agenda and NEEDS Assessments are going to ensure that targeted capacity needs and policy issues are addressed and relevant to business delivery.
However, on Strengthening Performance Management, the president said that government intends to strengthen Performance Management through developing criteria to measure performance, efficiency and relevance to daily needs of the citizens.
“This will involve a robust, monitoring and evaluation framework that will guide a new incentive system in public service and setting targets for critical institutions. Mechanism and procedures will be put in place for adaptation in every circumstance.
“We believe that performance must be keenly monitored in this process within our MDAs and we have to examine how objectives are measured,” the president said.
He added that the electronic payment system already put in place will be used to check ghost workers, saying also that the system has also helped government to discover the number of civil servants in the country.
He stressed that the electronic payment system will guide government to determine how much is spent on remuneration of workers, stressing that the Government Integrated Financial Management System (GIFMS) is being used to match revenue expenditure and budget in such a way that the financial managers are able to see what is being spent and what is left.
On taxation, he said this is a part of the ongoing reform from where government intends to increase revenue base and make the collection points much more efficient, especially with the appointment of a new tax boss.
Meanwhile, former Prime Minister of Georgia, Nika Gilauri has said that Nigeria has capacity to develop but only if competent personnel are brought on board to man strategic sectors of the economy.
While stressing the example of his country that promoted service oriented bureaucracy within short space of time. He said that Nigerian government should take a queue from Georgia by eliminating all bottlenecks that impede seamless business registration, adding that a study done between Georgia and Nigeria showed that businesses are encouraged with the use of speedy processing in the former country, whereas in Nigeria timeline for registration of businesses takes longer time with bribes demanded by some officials.
He stressed that construction permit for investors who wish to construct a warehouse in Georgia takes just about two days to be issued, whereas it takes160 days minimum in Nigeria. On number of days to set up a business after registration in Georgia, he said it takes two days, whereas it takes 28 days minimum in Nigeria.
He advised Nigeria to take tough choices to reinvent the country, including tackling corruption headlong and rewarding meritorious jobs by workers at both public and private sector.
Danladi Kifasi, Head of Service of the Federation said at the forum that civil servants require training and retraining in order to deliver quality service to the nation, adding that the National School of Government in collaboration with DFID has been helping to provide content for training of civil servants.