2015 budget has failed, says Babalakin

Businessman and Chairman of Bi-Courtney Limited, Dr. Wale Babalakin (SAN), has said that the 2015 national budget has  failed due to lack of adequate planning on the part of government officials.

The lawyer said despite the warning by the United States of America, which was one of the major buyers of the Nigerian oil a few years ago, there was no plan by the government to make up for the deficits that would likely  result from the loss of patronage.

Babalakin spoke in Abuja on Monday at a session organised by the Construction and Infrastructure Law Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association at the ongoing National Bar Conference of the association.

The theme of the session was, ‘Ending the scourge of abandoned projects in Nigeria’, but Babalakin spoke on the sub-theme, ‘The role of private sector and why there is failure in private infrastructural development’.

He said with the drop of the oil price to around $46 currently, the 2015 national budget which was predicated on above $50 benchmark of oil price, had failed.

The oil price dipped further to $43 on Tuesday.
Babalakin said, “The substantial buyer of the Nigerian oil is the United States. The US government gave notice that in a few years, it would no longer buy oil from Nigeria. It went further to say it was likely to become self-sufficient in oil production and there was no panic. Rather, we continued.

“There was no panic in government circle. All we were told was that we had plan A; we have plan B, and we have plan C. One of the plans was budgeting at sixty something dollars per barrel, which was later reduced reluctantly to fifty-something dollars.

“Today, the price of oil is hovering around $46 per barrel. And if you are making future sale, you have to give substantial discount. So, that budget, as it is, has failed.”

Babalakin maintained that “as long as the government remained irresponsible,” development would be hard to come by.

He said there was the need for those responsible for the current state of affairs to account for their actions that contributed to the current failure of government to address existing infrastructure deficit.

He also argued that the current practice, where public officers do not respect terms of contracts and agreements, but see private investors in public infrastructure as either competitors or inferior partners, will continue to work against the quest to overcome the current deficit in the provisions and maintenance of public infrastructure.

Babalakin argued that the failure of most public and private sectors’ partnerships in the development of public infrastructure was not due to inadequate funding, but because of deliberate acts of sabotage by public officials.
He cited examples of how negative attitude of government officials had helped to destroy beautifully conceived private initiatives in the past.

(Punch)