2018 budget: Taking the bull by the horns – PunchNo body can see in the crystal ball when the 2018 budget will be assented to by President Muhammadu Buhari, despite its submission to the National Assembly on November 7. The April 24 deadline just announced by the House of Representatives for its passage is tentative. For those familiar with this notorious ritual, it evokes a sense of déjà vu. The 2017 budget was assented to on June 12 by Yemi Osinbajo, the Vice-President, then acting for his principal, who was hospitalised in London.

Disturbed by the country’s inexorable march to this embarrassing juncture once more, the President invited the principal officers of the National Assembly to the Presidential Villa for a meeting on the issue recently. The impression before then was that the Bukola Saraki-led parliament was not keen to get the N8.61 trillion budget out of its mill because of an ongoing cold war between it and the executive arm of government.

But the narrative has changed: heads of Ministries, Departments and Agencies are to blame for their reluctance to appear before the relevant committees to defend their expenditures, the President was told. Somehow convinced, Buhari has directed them to do so or be sacked. Reportedly culpable are 50 MDAs. The Budget Office had earlier dismissed the lawmakers’ claim that the details were not attached when it was presented to them.

Nevertheless, in seamless governance, no MDA mandarin would wait for a presidential directive to respond to parliamentary requests on budget deliberations. The Appropriation sub-committees have now issued reminders to the MDAs to appear before them, bringing all the details on demand. This is as far as the official tale goes.
However, the muffled but most deleterious rampart against the speedy budget passage is the Senate’s stand-off with Buhari for refusing to comply with its demand to sack Ibrahim Magu, the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. Twice, the Senate failed to confirm him as the President’s nominee for the agency’s substantive chair.

Buhari’s adamant posture on Magu had delayed the Senate’s confirmation of his nominees to the board of the Central Bank of Nigeria, its Monetary Policy Committee members and other appointments requiring the Senate approval. Above all, nobody needs to be told that Saraki is indignant with the executive for his ongoing trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal for alleged abuse of office over assets declaration when he was the governor of Kwara State. But such individual differences should never be allowed to get in the way of national interest.
If the National Assembly meant well, it would not have waited till January to begin work on the budget it received two months earlier. Critically, the lawmakers have raised issues with the capital expenditure performance in the 2017 budget. Yet, critical as this might be, they are not always driven by altruism. This is the crux of the matter.
Since 1999, the country has not been spared the yearly budget gridlock because of the so-called constituency projects of the legislators and the refusal of Presidents to sign the budgets as presented. Shehu Sani’s recent revelation that each senator gets N200 million worth of projects in the budget annually and N13.5 million monthly for allowances (running costs), is a teaser that still rankles in public imagination.

As the 2018 budget precedes next year’s general election, it is unlikely the lawmakers would allow reason to prevail just yet. A majority of them might not return. For instance, the parliament’s budget was increased from N115 billion to N125 billion last year when the country was still in recession. During the boom times, N150 billion was the minimum. But while the executive set aside N31 billion for the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the lawmakers unjustifiably slashed it to N10 billion and moved it to projects of their interests, among them the 100 new roads in the budget. These make the budget difficult to implement. Without question, it is not the duty of the legislators to dictate to the executive what projects to execute.
In 2016, the N100 billion inserted into the budget for members’ constituency projects was reduced to N60 billion after protracted splenetic exchanges between the executive and the legislature. A former Senate President, Ken Nnamani, and ex-Speaker, Aminu Masari, brokered a peace meeting; and Buhari eventually swallowed the bitter pill for the first time. The budget was then signed late.
These unsavoury trends might escalate when the MDAs complete their defence, and the audacious injection of selfish interests into the document begins. The Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, last year warned against the risk of crowded projects in the budget. Providing for community boreholes, town halls and rural roads in a federal budget is in breach of the Second Schedule of the 1999 Constitution, containing the 68 Items in the Exclusive Legislative List. If 2,399 of these projects were abandoned in 2013 alone, according to a former Special Duties Minister, Aminu Turaki, or money for some of them is creamed off, because they are never executed, as BudgIT reveals, it should then be clear to all that the scheme is an organised fraud.
Therefore, the lawmakers should stop overreaching themselves with the abuse of the power of appropriation as enshrined in Section 81 of the Constitution. Fashola and his colleagues have not been heckled by the lawmakers for not being steadfast in the execution of any priority national project. When they do, it is all about their interests.
But reminding them of their perennial self-seeking designs that undermine smooth-sailing budgets will remain the vocation of discerning observers. This is not to say, however, that the executive is blameless; far from it. The bureaucracy that habitually duplicates expenditures and inserted 276 curious items into the budget of 55 agencies in 2017, worth N145 billion, makes matters worse.
The economy suffers in all of this. Either from the lawmakers or the executive, these shenanigans must end. Government has often shut down in the United States, when budget passage is delayed for a while because of bipartisan squabbles. Both parties in Nigeria should learn from this. Enough is enough!
