CHEERFULLY unrepentant about its role in perennially delaying national economic planning, the National Assembly has once again executed major alterations to the 2018 Budget. President Muhammadu Buhari underscored the malady by the parliamentarians once more when he signed the 2018 Appropriation Bill into law on June 18. Essentially, the NASS discarded critical federal projects that the Executive proposed in the spending plans. Instead, the lawmakers introduced a slew of inconsequential constituency projects, mutilating the document beyond repairs. After delaying the proposals for seven months, this is double jeopardy for the fragile economy.
At the end, the NASS increased the total package to N9.1tn instead of the initial estimates of N8.6tn. The parliament mischievously introduced 6,403 projects that originated from them into the budget at a cost of N578bn, while they made cuts to the 4,700 projects from the Executive. The cuts totalled N347bn, Buhari lamented. The projects from the lawmakers include boreholes, town halls, viewing centres, purchase of sewing machines and tricycles. Ordinarily, these projects are the responsibilities of the state and local governments.
The cuts and insertions are contentious. Funding for the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Second Niger Bridge, the East-West Road, Itakpe-Ajaokuta rail project, Bonny-Bodo Road and Mambilla Power Project was slashed by N11.5bn. These are strategic national projects. It belies logic why the parliament is toying with projects that could boost economic recovery. They also reduced the National Housing Programme funding by N8.7bn.
At a time insecurity looms large, they slashed the provision of security infrastructure for the (104) Unity Schools by N3bn; provisions for vital health services/drugs were cut by N7.5bn; provisions for Export Expansion Grant cut by N14.5bn and N5bn axed from the Pension Redemption Fund.
Conversely, the lawmakers hiked Statutory Transfers by N73.9bn. This is to accommodate the inordinate increment in the NASS budget by N14.5bn (from N125bn to N139.5bn). This is a perverse system that has blighted budgeting since 1999.
The Federal Government, which signed a commitment to rebuild the United Nations building in Abuja that was bombed by Boko Haram in 2011, will not be able to fulfil its promise because the NASS cut the proposal for the reconstruction to N100m – from N4bn. This is most insensitive. Egregiously, the lawmakers injected 70 new road projects into the budget of the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing. These are roads without engineering design, procurement or environmental impact assessment.
At the best of times, the Nigerian economy is fragile. Bedevilled by corruption, mismanagement and weak infrastructure base, it limps on without direction. NASS has compounded this debacle with its reckless abuse of legislative power. Relying on Section 81 of the 1999 Constitution, which states that it has powers to consider the estimates, it has been mutilating the document. In giving them such powers, the framers of the constitution assumed the lawmakers would be rational. It is clear they are not.
Efforts to change this meet with unscientific excuses by the NASS. Buhari said, “Many of the projects cut are critical and may be difficult, if not impossible, to implement with the reduced allocation. Furthermore, many of these new projects introduced by the National Assembly have been added to the budgets of most MDAs with no consideration for institutional capacity to execute them or the incremental recurrent expenditure that may be required.” We agree. A new report by the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry says that the late passage of the budget erodes the Gross Domestic Product by 13 per cent.
It is absurd that every Fourth Republic President has suffered the impunity of the NASS. In May 2000, the then President Olusegun Obasanjo refused to assent to that year’s budget. His reason: the NASS padded its own budget by N2bn, that is, from N22.7bn to N24.7bn. The estimates submitted for that year were N667.5bn. In 2005, Obasanjo accused the lawmakers of collecting bribes to pass the budget. The late President Umaru Yar’Adua tangoed with the NASS over the 2008 budget after the parliament frivolously raised N2.9tn proposals with most of the increment going to it. Yar’Adua only agreed to sign the budget in April of that year after the lawmakers consented to work on a supplementary budget from the Executive.
The trend occurred in 2011 under President Goodluck Jonathan. That year, the parliament jacked up its vote from N120bn to N232.7bn, which the president refused to sign. In 2016, the House of Representatives suspended a member, Abdulmumin Jibrin, after he accused his colleagues of padding the budget. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who was acting for Buhari, decried the mutilation and refused to sign the document.
This legislative distortion must stop. To save Nigeria from legislative impunity and reset the economy with a January-to-December budget system, different segments of the society have to play conscious roles. The people themselves have to mobilise against the lawmakers’ excesses. The lawmakers are the ones deriving all the advantages from the system. Persistent agitations, as occurred in South Korea, Romania, Armenia and Burkina Faso, where peaceful protests forced changes in government, should be on the agenda against the NASS.
The NASS hides under Section 81 of the 1999 Constitution, which gives it power to evaluate the budget. However, evaluation is not the same as insertion of constituency projects. To settle this perfidy, the Federal Government should seek the legal interpretation of this provision in the court, especially in relation to the insertion of projects that are impractical to implement.
The Executive should discontinue its habit of submitting the budget late to NASS and repeating the same items in every year’s budget. The law on the budget should be reviewed, in which the Executive must lay it before the parliament at a specific date and in which the NASS must pass the bill before a new year sets in.
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