Once more the country has to contend with the pains of another late national budget with the 2018 package still in the works, three months into the New Year and with the end of the first quarter looming. For reasons of mutual recrimination and blame gaming among government officials, the 2018 budget is presently trapped before National Assembly committees, with no date for the budget’s passage into law.
At Present the National Assembly is blaming the heads of MDAs in the Executive Branch for not coming forward expeditiously to defend their budget submissions. Assembly leaders said many MDA heads were ill-prepared to attend scheduled meetings and provide relevant information needed by the lawmakers to scrutinise budget proposals. A week ago, Senate specifically accused MDA heads of failing to appear and provide clarifications that will justify approval of their budgets for 2018.
the Executive Branch responded to the failings of the MDAs through the intervention of the Director General of the Budget Office Mr. Ben Akabueze, who implied in a statement he issued that the details sought by the National Assembly had already been supplied in the Budget 2018 document that President Muhammadu Buhari laid before the National Assembly on November 7 last year. According to him, the budget document had “all the usual details required by the National Assembly to process the budget.” These details, the statement said, included the budgets of all federal MDAs based on the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) budget templates. Going by Akabueze’s position, the National Assembly does not need to bother the MDAs for any other details and should just go ahead and pass the package as received.
This laid back and seemingly simplistic premise of the Budget Office tells much about the disposition of the Executive Branch towards the matter of budgeting and is driven by a wrong mindset towards the otherwise sacred practice of managing public finance. Such disposition is responsible for the unserious attitude of many government officials towards managing the country’s fiscal endowments, as manifests in the routine diversion of such funds away from scheduled budget targets to other ends including funnelling into private pockets. Put succinctly, hardly does any other factor facilitate misappropriation of public funds and failure of budgeted programmes than the issue of late budgets.
For the purpose of clarification the budget is not a mere assemblage of accounting figures that indicate expected revenue and expenditure over a period of time. Rather it is a law which defines the funding mandate for the respective government. And like any plan of action timing is one of the most significant aspects of any budget. By delaying the budget to run out its statutory time frame such a package is dead on arrival as it comes with inherent distortions that deny it virility and potency.
The errant heads of MDAs that are holding the country back by not honouring legislative summons should be called to order. It is wrong to say all the details are already in the budget document and that it needs no further clarification from MDA heads. Interestingly the Presidency has absolved itself from providing them any alibi for dishonouring any invitation from the National Assembly. Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly [House of Representatives] Abdulrahman Kawo said in a statement that there is “ a Circular from the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) intimating the heads of MDAs” to honour all invitations from the National Assembly. These officers should appear before Assembly committees immediately and accelerate the passing of the already long delayed 2018 budget.
