Stress test for ‘Delta Beyond Oil’ policy

The ‘Delta Beyond Oil’ policy of the Delta State government is a magic wand that Emmanuel Uduaghan and his team invoke to explain everything and assure all that everything is fine in the state.

The slogan which began life as ‘Delta Without Oil’ seeks to capture the excellent idea that the state must recognise that oil boom will end one day and therefore all hands must be on deck to ensure that the right strategic planning must be done today so that when oil price slump visits us (as we are experiencing now) we will not be caught napping.

Those who fail to plan for the rainy day by living entirely on the tactical plane of existence will be left to cope with contemporary realities like the Federal Government that is now exposed to the elements without protection because of weak strategic thinking and lack of fiscal discipline in the past.

A stress test for the unfolding fiscal reality in Delta State is the extent to which the state can cope with tumbling oil prices and consequent dwindling federal revenue allocations. Lagos State, which has never made much noise about ‘life beyond oil boom’, has just announced its 2015 budget which shows that the state will rely on the federation account for only 25 percent of its spending plans. This means that Babatunde Raji Fashola, executive governor of Lagos State, has ensured that internally generated revenue will fund 75 percent of his 2015 budget.

Regrettably, Delta State’s historical IGR figures indicate that the state’s 2015 budget will rely on the federation account for up to 85 percent of the planned expenditure. How do we know this?

Delta State’s IGR accounted for 11.77 percent, 15.43 percent and 15.96 percent of approved revenues in 2012, 2013 and 2014, respectively.

The corresponding total revenues as per approved budgets were N437.218 billion, N398.317bn and N391.513bn.

Expressed as a percentage of total expenditure in approved budgets, Delta State’s IGR stood at 11.38 percent, 13.63 percent and 13.86 percent in 2012, 2013 and 2014, respectively.

This is to say that historical IGR trends predict that Delta State’s 2015 budget will rely on the ailing federation account for up to 85 percent of planned expenditure unless the budget size is drastically reduced. This contrasts sharply (enviously) with Lagos State whose 2015 budget relies on the federation account for only 25 percent of planned expenditure!

This stress test clearly exposes the hollowness of the ‘Delta Beyond Oil’ policy sloganeering business in Asaba. Those who don’t know that there is no concrete plan to make the concept drive governance in Delta State have fallen for the empty rhetoric and named Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan Best Governor of Year 2013 or Personality of the Year on account of ‘Delta Beyond Oil’ policy.

If the award givers were right, Delta State would be one of the states like Lagos that are most prepared to cope with the oil price slump. This certainly is not the case. The details of that story will wait for another day.

What we can do today is to invite you to reflect on some of the speeches at the Vanguard Newspaper award in Lagos in March this year.

“I am particularly delighted that our humble efforts to create jobs for the people through empowerment programmes, infrastructural development and other enabling environments as encapsulated in the Delta Beyond Oil policy were being noticed and appreciated,” Uduaghan observed after receiving the Vanguard Newspaper award for Personality of the Year 2013.

The governor claimed that the efforts for which he was being honoured were already yielding results such as “better security of lives and property as well as attracting local and foreign investors to the state”.

Vanguard’s general manager and editor-in-chief, Gbenga Adefaye, said at the event that Uduaghan’s feat of good governance manifested in the successes achieved in the political and economic fields informed the governor’s choice.

This stress test means that the jury is yet out on whether the various award givers based their selections on a fair assessment of the impact and consequences of Governor Uduaghan’s two-term occupancy of Government House, Asaba.

Weneso Orogun