The National Assembly should work on the appropriation for the sake of all
It is absurd yet it is real. We are already in May and this year’s national budget, still an appropriation bill, is yet to pass the National Assembly.
The Senate and House of Representatives have stalled on this matter, and it is hard for any Nigerian to understand why. The Buhari Administration atop the All Progressives Congress’s (APC) hierarchy promised that the era of procrastination would yield to a business-like alacrity once his party took over in 2015.
The Jonathan era was marked by a dilatory cynicism that was also perceived as an excuse for corruption. So, when the Buhari and APC took over the nation expected a different attitude. But it has been a painful reenactment of past failures.
The Senate and the House of Representatives had not only received the budget proposal promptly last year, it had undertaken a dance of activities, summoning ministers and other top officers who could account for portions of the bill.
Then it hit a stalemate that has not, up till now, been explained to the Nigerian people. It all became quiet on the budget front. Month followed month, and it became clear that the National Assembly had not taken its responsibility with the gravity it deserves.
They started to put off the day to pass it until a twist entered the drama. The report had it that the police had raided the home of Danjuma Goje, the chairman of the Senate appropriation committee. The raid, according to the report, gave up documents that were related to the appropriation bill along with sums of money.
The admission that the police raid rid the Senate and House of Representatives of the materials of the bill shows how unserious the lawmakers have been. If the senate chairman has the details in his home, is he the only one permitted to have it? Is there no back-up?
The raid took place April and we are well into May, why has the National Assembly not been able to summon its powers to order the police to return those files germane to the passing of the bill? This sort of negligence has led some analysts to believe that it is not just ineptitude that is at play but also political brinkmanship by a senate that has been at odds with a presidency on a number of issues, including the confirmation of Ibrahim Magu as chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), or the spat with the comptroller general of the Nigeria Customs, Hameed Ali.
Budgets are supposed to be time sensitive. On their part, the National Assembly is cold-blooded. The law permits money to be appropriated in the event the appropriation bill is delayed. But it only allows for the release of money for basic business. That is, it forbids government to shut down.
That is not consolation for a country that has hit a snag economically, especially when the government itself announced the economy had slipped into recession. Technically, we learned that we slid out of the same recession without passing the budget. In actual fact, though, there is great suffering in the land.
If the ministries and government agencies had new initiatives and projects for the new year, they cannot take flight without the passing of the budget.
It makes the National Assembly a cauldron of paralysis. They have not been interested in innovation, in the dynamics of a modern state that pushes people to test new frontiers of development. It is sad.
We are still expecting the National Assembly to save the economy, and not tie down a country with potential because of pettifogging quarrels with the executive.
