World Bank managing director and former Nigerian finance minister, Dr. (Mrs.) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said on Tuesday that Nigeria needed quality over quantity in government spending, as parliament mulls an expansionary budget for 2010.

Okonjo-Iweala, who helped Nigeria negotiate debt relief in 2005, made the comments three weeks after Nigeria announced plans to raise spending by a third next year.

"It is not just an issue of putting more money in but how it is being spent," she told an economic conference in Abuja.

Her comments echo fears among some analysts that the sharp increase in budgeted spending in sub-Saharan Africa's second biggest economy for next year comes ahead of national elections in 2011, a time when political minds are usually more focused on campaigning than on fiscal discipline.

President Umaru Yar'Adua, who is in Saudi Arabia receiving treatment for a heart condition, sent a 4.079 trillion naira ($27 billion) 2010 budget proposal to parliament on November 24.

The proposal is a 32 per cent increase in planned spending on 2009 and, if approved by parliament, will push Nigeria's fiscal deficit to 4.79 per cent, smashing through a three per cent target sent under a 2007 fiscal prudence act.

About a third of the planned budget is capital spending on areas including infrastructure, the power sector and development in the restive Niger Delta, where an amnesty programme has brought a lull in attacks on the mainstay oil industry.

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