The 10^th of February 2021 recorded an outstanding presentation by Professor Evans Osabuohien where he engaged on a Roundtable on National and Regional Affairs on a critic topic: Budget Implementation Constraints: Diversification, Idle Assets and Currency Printing Discourse in Nigeria at the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.  Other notable presenters at the event include Prof. Jonathan Aremu (Professor of International Economic Relations and ECOWAS Consultant) and Ken Ukaoha (Acting Director-General, West African Institute for Trade and Agricultural Development & National Association Secretariat President).

The presentation of Prof. Evans Osabuohien captures issues on the best practice that can be applied when developing and implementing the national budget. Placing three options on a scale, he weighs diversification, Idle Asset, and Printing of Currency as a panacea to solving National Budgeting and Implementation constraints in Nigeria.

In his research and presentation, he identified the challenges the federal government faces in developing and building a National Budget for the nation. His presentation came to specific conclusions on/about the three options that could be applied to National Budgeting. First, he considers diversification as optimal because a diversified economy is one with various revenue streams, hence providing the economy with a sustainable capacity for growth. It makes the economy flexible, not fixed. Secondly, he noted that the re-sale of Idle Assets would enable the government to raise revenue to support the budget. Finally, the printing of currency he regarded as detrimental to the growth of the economy because of the fluidity of money and the need for the requisite system as ‘container’ to avoid the danger of hyperinflation as in the case of Zimbabwe.

Conclusively, he noted that the strategies to the growth of the economy in the face of budget implementation constraints as diversification and sale of idle assets (based on the competitive bidding process and transparent execution), which are existentially optimal compared to the printing of currency is sufficient to the growth of the economy. The presentation is available online at https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.17941.45285