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President Muhammadu Buhari signed the 2018 Appropriation Bill about five hours before I started to write this. He said some things before he did, and in the process, he reminded me that I had wanted to intervene in the issues he raised. That time, Buhari as usual shot arrows. Not a few of them landed in the lawmakers’ dome.
Incidentally, some of the lawmakers were present at the signing ceremony. The President didn’t mind that fact though. He shot and the representatives of the lawmakers took it with big happy smiling faces.
My colleagues did well capturing the smiling faces the very moment Buhari was hitting hard on those who had engaged in minus and plus exercise with the appropriation bill that he sent to them. As it turned out, the smiles that the lawmakers’ representatives wore on that occasion were questionable. I don’t need to state that I had suspected as much while their smiles lasted. As soon as the representatives left the President’s den, those who should speak on behalf of the lawmakers engaged in what was obviously a reprisal against Aso Villa. They mentioned why they were right and the executive was wrong regarding what transpired with respect to the 2018 appropriation bill. Here, I won’t go into that debate except to repeat what I had stated in the past: one of the two parties should sue the other and let Their Lordships determine who has the power to do what regarding the budget. I still stand on that same spot long after I had expressed the view while President Olusegun Obasanjo was in office.
The outcome will be a positive contribution to the nation’s democracy and legal development.
Alright, this is where I’m heading. On the occasion of the signing of the 2018 appropriation bill, President Buhari said he was working towards getting the January-December schedule back on track. He wasn’t saying this for the first time. When he did on this occasion however, I said to myself, “We don’t need it.” I didn’t entertain this thought for the first time either. It’s just that because the President himself specifically expresses this intention, it’s fresh and it feels right that I focus on it rather than postpone it one more time.
Each time citizens and government officials mention the need to return to the January-December budget schedule, I try to think of why they hold that view. First, I think of the benefits that the period may confer. I have never come up with any that sounds like a matter of life and death to the nation. In my view, we mention a return to the January-December arrangement because it’s what we are used to. I don’t think we ask for it because of some empirical evidence of the advantages it has for us. I know the January-December schedule is a carryover from the colonial era. From 1900 when the British took over, they had been using the January-December budget schedule. For purposes other than my column, I have studied several colonial documents dating back to the first decade after 1900 when the British government took over governance in especially the north of Nigeria. I saw in those documents how simple the annual revenue and expenditure estimates of that period were. For instance, the annual budgets prepared at the Native Authority level in a Division (and just one, two or three NAs may make up one Province that is the equivalent of states now) could pass for income and expenditure in the book of a grocer. More often than not, they accompanied the report of the third quarter emanating from the NA to Divisional Officer and to the Resident of the Province who in turn notified the Governor of the Protectorate. Things were much simpler in those days.
In the First Republic too, each Region prepared its budget with the outcome that less items had to be budgeted for by the government at the centre. With the incursion of the military in politics came this sense of false security regarding quick, easy preparation and passage of budgets. A Head of State had only his cabinet or the Supreme Military Council to inform about what the budget contained. In the event, ministries became used to reviewing previous year’s budget estimates in order to arrive at new ones. There was no legislative process that could take about three months to check what civil servants had put together as budget. The January-December arrangement which had every budget approved by December 31 was much easier in the military years. Now, we have a legislature that sees itself as an equal partner with the executive in the budget process. This presents its challenges. Still, we want to stick with a time schedule that we don’t have the structure, capacity, mentality and readiness to sustain. The Executive arm cannot realistically meet an October submission deadline, and lawmakers can never meet December 31.
I didn’t think much of the January-December arrangement in those years when we seemed to have no problems with it, especially under the military. Now that we have issues, I begin to wonder whether or not we need that same time schedule. Does January-December confer benefits that are worth the fervor it is generating? To me, current conditions surrounding the process of preparing our national budget doesn’t favour January-December. Also, implementation process suffers in some vital aspects under the January-December setting. My explanation regarding this supports why I think we can well do with any twelve calendar months other than January-December. One, no one has ever been impressed regarding the manner our annual budget is compiled at the MDA level. Allegations are that officials simply jerk up or reduce the figures in the previous year’s budget and pass it to the president. It is said that there’s nothing data-based about our budgets. Connecting programmes and projects from one year to the next is also lacking. Not long ago, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, said the executive promised to carry parts of the 2017 budget over into the 2018, but there wasn’t a sign of this when the 2018 budget arrived the dome.
Saraki was shown on the floor of the Senate appealing to his colleagues to not reject a consideration of the 2018 appropriation bill at the committee stage as some lawmakers had threatened to do.
Two, implementation of capital projects here has a lot to do with the season. When we do January-December, funds aren’t always released on time to take advantage of the dry season for the construction of roads especially in some parts of the country. The last three months of the year also witnesses the drying up of funds and this slows down the pace of work. There is loss of valuable time regarding construction projects as well as in agriculture where release of funds and procurement of fertilizer often come late after the farming season has begun. With a June-June arrangement, for instance, such will not occur as the budget of the ongoing year easily takes care of the needs of a new farming season, and one procurement process can easily flow into the other without hitches.
There has also been this linking of the budget to the calendar year of banks that keep revenue for the government. They start in January and close their account books in December, starting afresh in the new year just as the Federal Government starts. But most of such accounts have been closed with the introduction of the Treasury Single Account, and so the excuse isn’t tenable anymore. Moreover, in a normal year when December witnesses only the Christian festivity, budget implementation under the January-December arrangement is slow. When Muslim festivities also fall into December and January period, approving and implementing the budget becomes even slower. Meanwhile, the June-August period has no national holidays (except for Muslim festivities that may fall into it once in a long while). For me, these three months are more suitable for us than January-December. If one budget ends in June and another one takes off as has happened this year, we stand a better chance of having transitions that the usual December-January hiccups cannot hinder.
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