By Adeleye Kunle
Last week, President Muhammadu Buhari submitted the last budget of his administration, a historic figure of N20.51 trillion for the 2023 fiscal year.
The budget has raised concerns among Nigerians over the plan to borrow over N10 trillion. More importantly, the budget highlights the failure of the Buhari administration to keep its promise of reducing the cost of governance.
During the campaign in 2015, candidate Buhari had insisted he will cut down the cost of governance starting with reducing the presidential fleets.
At the emergence of Buhari in 2015, the presidential fleet had one Boeing Business Jet 737, one Gulfstream G550, one Gulfstream G500, one Hawker 4000, two Falcon 7X, two AgustaWestland AW139 helicopters, and two AgustaWestland AW101 helicopters.
Aside from that, the 2015 APC manifesto specifically proposed a reduction of the cost of governance.
âWe will reduce the overall number of bloated and unnecessary parastatals, through âamalgamation and abolition. However, we recognize that in some instances, we will need to create new agencies to push forward our economic agenda,â the manifesto read in part