By CrossRiverWatch Admin
It was Charlena Johnson in her No Cross No Crown that said that: “We shouldn’t be ordinary; we should challenge ourselves and not just think inside the box. We should dare to be different and get out of the box.”
Whether or not, Governor Benedict Bengioushuye Ayade of Cross River State read this or has come across this in his lifetime which seems to portray an individual that emits an aura of voracious reading, remains to be known.
Perhaps, he will do some of us the favor of putting that in a “Digital Autobiography,” which I am not sure will come before his much awaited “The Agony of Innocence” which is supposed to chronicle his challenges at the Courts of which he emerged victorious at the Supreme Court on that fateful December 9, 2016.
However, this piece is not about his life and times but about the last two budgets of his administration and the most recent one of Kinetic Crystallization.
But, first let us start from the beginning and no apologies if you have no patience to read to the end.
A budget according to the Business Dictionary is an estimate of costs, revenues, and resources over a specified period, reflecting a reading of future financial conditions and goals.
And, being one of the most important administrative tools, a budget serves also as a plan of action for achieving quantified objectives, standard for measuring performance, and as a device for coping with foreseeable adverse situations.
On October 25, 2016, Governor Ayade presented a budget (his first) of NGN350 billion to the state Assembly and tagged it a budget of “Deep Vision” which was a 274 percent increase from the 2015 budget of NGN149 billion.
This was viewed as unrealistic by many as Ayade argued that the signature projects and several other projects of deep vision which will take the state out of the financial woods were catered for in this budget.
However, many of these projects delayed in taking off with only the Calabar Garment factory completed.
Undaunted by critics, Mr. Ayade on November 1, 2016 presented a NGN301 billion 2017 budget of “Infinite Transposition.” This was NGN49 billion less than his first.
Infinite is an adjective which simply means limitless or endless in space, extent, or size; impossible to measure or calculate.
Transposition simply is the act of transposing (to change the order of things) something.
This to me, meant a limitless change in the industrial, sociological, sociopolitical and socioeconomic landscape of the state.
While Cross Riverians were still scratching their heads in January 2017 about what that means, he assented to a budget of NGN707 billion and explained that the over NGN400 billion that had been incorporated was to cater for the projects of deep vision from the previous year that will infinitely transpose to three more years. This placed the state second with Lagos budgeting NGN812 billion.
Don’t stop reading just yet; especially if you are regaled by the constant bombardment of mendacious propaganda by all levels of past and present governments.
Defending the transposition, Mr. Ayade told us that it was a war time budget. He said that the budget “believes in the infinity of dreams, capacity and intellect. It is a budget that believes also that budgeting and expectations of your pocket limit your aspirations and dreams and therefore, the new budgeting concept believes in deficit budgeting because it has tremendous advantages.”
It did not end there as usual and he went philosophical and averred that: “When you budget beyond your carrying capacities and physical realities, it allows your soul to leap into quantum height to be able to drive with the energy that must free the state from pains and agony.”
Indeed my soul leapt into quantum heights of infinite transpositions due to the deep vision of the Ben Ayade’s administration.
And just yesterday, as I stepped out of the House of Assembly, a friend asked me: “Jonathan are you kinetically crystallized?”
This time, Cross River State known for its firsts, was again first in not just having two professors leading the state, but, first to cross the NGN1 trillion mark in budgeting in Nigeria as a state, making it the highest a state has ever dared with Lagos hoping to present just (yes, just) NGN1 trillion while Kano and Kaduna have presented budgets of a little above NGN200 billion.
Little wonder there was shock on everyone’s face when he mentioned NGN1.3 trillion!
At first I thought it was NGN130 billion. But, hell no! This was much more digitally gargantuan than the infinite transpositions of deep vision of 2016 – 2017 which when totaled is just (yes! Just) NGN1.057 trillion only.
Of course, Charlena Johnson is right in this case. This is no ordinary budget. But, Alexander Pope in “An Essay of Caution” posited that: “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
Also, Robert Frost says: “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.”
Yet, Mr. Ayade presented a budget of Kinetic Crystallization which according to my neighbor, is the reason why Calabar is hot as there seemed to have been a Kinetic Crystallization of the sun after months of kinetic showers which seemed infinite.
The word Kinetic is an adjective that relates with motion, while Crystallization is a derivative of the verb ‘Crystallize’ which could mean something become clearer or more definite. It could also mean the transposition from liquid to a shaped form.
So, is Ayade telling us that this budget is supposed to provide the kinetic energy that will infinitely transpose his deep visions into crystal or crystalline forms?
While presenting the budget, he described it as “a kinetic budget that allows me flexibility to dream to the extent that God has given me the intellectual capacity to reach.”
He invited the public to think deep like him. According to him, if he was not a deep thinker, the state will be faced with so many challenges. He said: “You must think deep because if I did not have that vision to think deep, we will still be dealing with issues of security, refuse, salaries and pensions. Indeed we will be dealing with the very essence of survival.”
Indeed, he is thinking deep, or so he thinks. But, despite expectations that the budget will be released for scrutiny; Journalists, Civil Society organizations and several others are still searching for the last two budgets as heads of government parastatals jealously guard theirs.
In fact, a Principal aide once said that nearly 90 percent of the appointees do not know how the budget looks like. They don’t know what was budgeted for the sectors the operate in!
This runs contrary to the expectations of the citizenry and the constitution. The lack of access to the last two appropriation bills has led to a weak monitoring and evaluation scheme by Cross Riverians and in my opinion, if we are to see a true kinetic crystallization of the deep visions that will lead to the infinite transposition of Cross River State, our budgets have to be made accessible.
Or is Ayade following the words of Niccolo Machiavelli? When he said that: “It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.”
Ayade definitely has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions where we had very conservative budgets but like Martin Luther King Jr said, we must substitute courage for caution.
As we look forward to the use of the Ayadesian theory to explain this budget with the calculations involving the political constant; ‘food on the table’ while the religiously fateful proponents of Ayadeism clap away to the awaited nexus plexus connectivity of this budget to the true anthropological nature of the black man of providing a shoulder for his brother to lean on, it is only necessary we get our hands on the budget and those of previous years.
This will enable us distill it to the sub dialectal groups, the verve, elegance, panache, poise, agility, strength, warmth, class, hospitality, zeal, character, enigmatic energy, versatility as well as the hexokinases and cytokinesis that will structure the growth of the state contained in the budget presented by a Governor some believe is exhibiting hyperkinesis.
And right now, I am vitaminized and kinetically crystallized in a deep vision of relaying the facts in the budgets to ensure an infinite transposition of our dear state to an ecclesiastical realm despite the fact that my negro spiritual ontology has a complex connectivity with God.
Until then, remain kinetically transposed in deep visions that will crystallize your infinite blessings from the Supreme being.
Jonathan Ugbal is a journalist, broadcaster and budding activist
NOTE:Opinions expressed in this article are strictly attributable to the author, Jonathan Ugbal, and do not represent the opinion of CrossRiverWatch or any other organization the author works for/with.
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