“Envelop budgeting entails assigning every spending category in a budget to envelop with each envelop allocated a fix amount of money which cannot be transferred to another envelop” When the House of Representatives suspended plenary on October12 to allow various committees to attend to Ministries Department and Agencies (MDAs) in defence of their 2023 budget proposal not a few lawmakers were excited about the exercise. President Muhammadu Buhari had on October 7 before the joint session of the national assembly presented N20.51 trillion 2023 appropriation. Some committee chairmen saw the yearly budget defence appearance by MDAs as an annual ritual…
Author: Editor
Section 22 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, imposes an obligation on the media to hold Government accountable to Nigerians. “The press, radio, television and other agencies of the mass media,” the section says, “shall at all times be free to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in this Chapter and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people.” The Chapter in reference is Chapter II and it is titled “Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy”. It is in twelve Sections, beginning with Section 13 of the Constitution and ending in Section…
This is a corollary to my two articles published in this column on 16th October 2020 and 23rd June 2021, which can be accessed via www.deepthoughtwithmkothman.blogspot.com and it is the concluding part of last week’s piece. As mentioned earlier, an Inter-ministerial Committee was set up for the Development of a National/Multi-Sectorial Flood Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan. Despite the committee’s effort to address the flood tragedy, the nation lost 70 people in the 2021 flooding with over 200,000 people displaced. This year, 2022, the flood incidences occurred with catastrophic severity. Already, over 600 people were reported killed by the flood with millions…
Among the reasons given by the Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, for the redesigning of the ₦200, ₦500 and ₦1000 notes is that there is some ₦3.2 trillion in circulation out of which 2.7 trillion is outside the banking system. The assumption is that those stupendous amounts outside could be proceeds of crime – corruption, kidnappings, robbery, etc., and so they would cease to be legal tender since the owners would not take them to the banks for fear of being found out. Again, the CBN governor disclosed that between 2015 and 2022, the currency in circulation…
This week, there was yet another meeting to review the state of governance and underdevelopment in the Sahel. It was organised by the UNDP and International-IDEA in Dakar, Senegal. One of the participants who has been counting Sahel meetings said it’s the 251st since 1992 and the said meetings have produced 22 strategy papers pathways to securing peace and development in the zone. The question that then arose was whether the meetings bereft of good ideas and effective strategies necessitating more of them or is the problem the unwillingness, if not determination of governments and international partners, not to not…
Yesterday in Jos, after weeks of procrastination and rehearsals, Senator Ahmed Bola Tinubu, the Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress demonstrated another pattern of unfitness for the office he seeks to occupy. From his unsteady gaits to his incoherence and the unintended but welcome prayer for the PDP, all was a theatrical exhibition of a misplaced ambition. The manifestation in Jos is a further consolidation of a pattern in the physical and psychological composition of Tinubu, who a few weeks ago shocked his host, Governor Nasir El-Rufai when he said Nigeria would go from rotten to bad. Analysts who…
Mrs Lucy Peters (not real name) is a 23 year-old single mother who was abandoned by her boyfriend after impregnating her in 2020. Her predicament started after she gave birth to her child in 2021. Her boyfriend told her that he was not ready for fatherhood and subsequently abandoned her. To compound her problems her parents, angered that their daughter got pregnant out of wedlock, also abandoned her. She had to take up menial job to fend for herself and her baby. Determined to fight back against her ordeal, the 23-year-old mother consulted an NGO, where she enrolled for a…
In 2015, when the race to the general election got to a fever pitch, all manner of theories and conspiracies were woven around Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, as though he was the candidate of the newly formed All Progressives Congress. The AIT did a documentary deliberately targeted at the former Lagos state Governor entitled; THE LION OF BOURDILON which attempted a faulty characterisation of Asiwaju Tinubu as someone who represented the good, the bad and the ugly in the 2015 political narratives. President Goodluck Jonathan was running against the grains following the idea of zoning that is enshrined in the PDP…
My attention has been drawn to some of the tirades on social media following my frank response during an interview on Channels TV regarding the “investments” Mr. Peter Obi claimed to have made with Anambra state revenues. Sadly, several of the comments left the issue of the interview to probe or suggest motives, inferred from my response on “investment” that I am opposed to Peter Obi’s ambition and therefore committed a “crime” for which the punishment is internecine abuse and harassment even to my family. Some people even suggest that the gunmen who went to attack a checkpoint at my…
In our lackadaisical manner as a developing nation, we ignore almost every imminent disaster until it happens, then our leaders begin to shed crocodile tears and before you pronounce “Jack”, an investigation panel would have been put in place, if the disaster is big enough. In most cases, the hidden aim of the panel is to avoid asking embarrassing questions about the preventable incidence. By the time, the panel report is submitted, if ever done, the euphoria of the incident would have gone, the victims of the disaster; the dead were buried, and the injured and properties losers would have…