- Will he honour the promise to return budget to normal Jan-Dec cycle this time around?
Most Nigerians would be at a loss as to what to make of the latest pledge by Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma, to return the federal budget cycle to January – December, given the administration’s appalling record of stewardship in budget formulation and execution over the course of the past budget cycles.
The reason is not far-fetched: this would certainly not be the first time the minister will be making the call. In fact, he made the same call in June 2017, barely 24 hours after the then Acting President Yemi Osinbajo signed the 2017 Appropriation Bill into law. ”The 2018 budget”, he had said at the event tagged – Flag off of the 2018 Budget Preparation Process – “needs to get to the National Assembly not later than early October so that the National Assembly can conclude work on it before the end of the year.”
As it turned out, the budget referenced was not laid before the parliament until November 7, 2017 – one clear month behind schedule, and would not be signed into law until June 20, 2018 – seven clear months after.
Tardiness, to be sure, has long become the standard fare for what should ordinarily be a seamless process. For instance, the first budget in the life of the Buhari administration was not presented to the parliament until December 22, 2015. That budget took the National Assembly nearly the whole of six months to conclude for the president’s eventual signature in May 2016. If the initial tardiness could be excused on the grounds that the administration had barely spent seven months in office, subsequent ones have proven to be worse. The 2017 budget, for instance, presented to parliament barely a week to Christmas – on December 14, 2016 – was only signed into law by acting President Osinbajo on June 12, 2017, some seven months after. As for Budget 2019 which President Muhammadu Buhari presented to the parliament on December 19, 2018, its passage into law is, four months into the year, still being eagerly awaited by Nigerians.
Much has been made particularly of Section 11 (b) of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 which makes explicit that the Medium Term Expenditure Framework/Fiscal Strategy Paper (MTEF/FSP) must be submitted to the National Assembly ‘not later than four months before commencement of the next financial year’. Surely, the law can only be as good as those charged with implementing it make it to be. The reality, unfortunately, is that neither the observance of the FRA 2007 nor the serial appropriation laws to which they annually give rise can claim to be anything near the expectations of Nigerians. That is the crux of the matter. The other part – a direct derivative of the former – is the poor implementation that has attended every successive budget, particularly the capital provisions; part of the reason why the senate only last week bemoaned the poor implementation of the 2018 budget.
In all, we understand that failure to observe the law is itself a symptom of a deeper malaise –failure of the political class. Whether the issue is bad faith, greed, incompetence or the utmost lack of capacity that have attenuated the budget experience, all will appear to find a common denominator in the failure of the principal actors in the executive and legislative branches to provide strategic direction at a time the country badly needs it.
It is certainly not sufficient to offer tepid assurances that things would change without concrete steps being taken. First, we expect to see the minister move swiftly and deliberately to address capacity issues that have contributed in no small way to hobbling the budget process. If only to enhance its technical capacity, the National Assembly might wish to consider something along the lines of the United States’ Congressional Budget Office.
Second, to the extent that a lot more stands to be achieved in the atmosphere of mutual respect, a better framework of engagement between the two arms of government would not only hasten the process, but will surely help reduce the source of much of the bickering associated with the process.
