The optimism over budget 2025

At a recent event in Abuja, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Alhaji Mohammed Idris, reiterated the federal government’s determination to ensure efficient and transparent implementation of the 2025 budget.

The minister described the budget as not only a mere document but a roadmap to economic resilience and stability. He said that the 2025 budget is deliberately structured to combat insecurity and deficiencies in health and education systems while at the same time embarking on infrastructure rehabilitation. The budget, he said, will give the country’s floundering agriculture the needed boost.

Government’s determination to boost agriculture through the 2025 budget was demonstrated recently when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu added a princely N1.5 trillion to the allocation of the Bank of Agriculture to recapitalise the essential institution.

The recapitalisation process will empower the bank which was battling catastrophic fund deficiencies. It will enable it to adequately fund mechanised farming through loans that would revolutionise food production and pull Nigeria out of its man-made food insecurity.

Nigeria’s spiraling food inflation is largely attributed to the insipid dependence on 70 million peasant farmers for the provision of food for a population of 218 million people.

The peasant farmers effectively fed the nation up to the 1980s when the population was in seven digits. Now, with the population in nine digits and still growing, the nation can only be fed through mechanised farming where tractors and combined harvesters can in hours clear and cultivate fields that a million peasant farmers will need six months to cultivate.

That primitive trend in food production will be reversed if the Bank of Agriculture disburses loans from the recapitalisation funds to mechanised farmers and ensure that the funds are not diverted to projects outside agriculture.

The budget was also restructured to combat Nigeria’s debilitating dependence on crude oil export as a major source of foreign exchange generation. 

The federal government increased the budget from N49.2 trillion to N54.7 trillion with the addition of N4.5 trillion to the original figure sent to the National Assembly. The additional fund was allocated to agriculture and solid minerals in a determined gesture to diversify the economy and combat food insecurity.   

From the additional N4.5 trillion raised from increase in tax revenue from the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and extra import duties from the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), government allocated N1 trillion to solid minerals.

The additional sum was designed to overcome the lack-luster attitude to solid minerals exploration in the country. With budget for solid minerals exploration sufficiently improved, everyone expects Nigeria to earn more from solid mineral exports and boost its waning foreign exchange incomes which is at the root of the disorderly retreat of the naira in the foreign exchange market.

From all indications, the positive thrust of the 2025 budget is already sending powerful signals to the economy. 

Food prices are already heading south and consumers are beginning to go to the market with money in their pockets and come home with goods in baskets. 

Some months ago consumers would go to the market with money in a basket and come home with goods in their pockets because spiraling inflation had depleted the purchasing power of the naira.

Sometime in 2024 the price of a basket of tomatoes, a major ingredient in making stew, shot up to N250,000 because of acute shortages.

The perception was that what goes up in Nigeria never comes down. Now, that perception has been proved wrong. In some communities, the price of a basket of tomatoes has dropped to N8,000.

In December 2024, the price of a bag of Big Bull parboiled rice produced in Nigeria went up to N123,100. 

Everyone was scared that one needs almost two months salary under the new minimum wage to buy a bag of rice which some large Nigerian families consume in a month.

Today, the situation has changed drastically. At Daleko Market in the outskirts of Lagos one can buy a bag of rice with just N60,000.

Blueprint shares the minister’s optimism about the positive thrust and planned efficient implementation of the 2025 budget. 

However, we enjoin the federal government to strictly monitor the use of the N1.5 trillion allocated to the Bank of Agriculture. The catastrophic failure of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) small farmers’ loan scheme (Anchor Borrowers Programme) must be avoided. CBN spent trillions of naira in the scheme but generated very little returns in terms of food supply.

Some of the loans beneficiaries collaborated with those who monitored the loans and diverted the money to other projects. They showed other people’s farms to those monitoring the loans.

Furthermore, we urge the Bank of Agriculture to work out transparent ways of monitoring the loans to be advanced to farmers. The money must be used strictly for food production.