Nigeria’s 17,500 public officers and their retinue of 24,000 aides consume 1.15 trillion naira annually, while less than 30% of the annual budget is allocated to 160 million Nigerians through provision of social amenities and infrastructure, the local media reported Tuesday (US$1=N158). The report quoted rights group International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) as releasing the figures after a research. According to the research, the officers who consumed the chunk of the nation’s budget include 1.12,788 local government officials (592 billion naira); 2,664 state executives (300 billion naira); 472 federal executives (98.3 billion naira); 469 federal lawmakers (60.4 billion naira) and 1,152 state lawmakers (40.9 billion naira). Others are 792 top state judicial officers (18.5 billion naira); 142 top federal judicial officers (14.8 billion naira) and 24,165 unconstitutional aides (15 billion – 20 billion naira) ”Nigeria’s budget policies have remained crudely stagnated and one of the most fraudulent, anti- development and anti-people as its budgets were being consumed by about 17,500 top elected and appointed public officers in the country in the form of recurrent expenses, covering personnel and overhead costs,” the group said. PANA reports that the amount of money being consumed by the public officials and their aides represent over a quarter of the country’s 2012 national budget, and could be part of the reason the country’s growth and development have been stunted. A large chunk of the annual budget is also lost to pervasive public corruption.
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