Fashola vs NASS: The waste of money bit is about right

by Alexander O. Onukwue

One of Fashola’s arguments against the change of projects in the budget provisions of the executive is the waste that accrues from the process.

The former Lagos Governor who has served as a Federal Minister since August 2015 made the remark while criticizing the National Assembly’s decision to alter parts of the 2017 Budget by reducing funds for certain projects in order to create money for some projects they inserted into it.

Fashola’s argument was that “it amounted to a waste of tax payers money and an unnecessary distortion of orderly planning and development for all sections of the country, for lawmakers to unilaterally insert items not under the Exclusive or Concurrent lists of the Constitution like boreholes and streetlights after putting Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAS, through the process of budget defence”.

Part of the Budget process requires Ministries and other agencies of Government whose budgets are subject to the approval of the National Assembly to appear before it to defend its proposed estimates. The same process had been followed in the process of passing the 2017 Budget before both chambers of the National Assembly, leading up to the signature by the Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, on the 12th of June.

Fashola’s scathing opinion has been received as an attack by the National Assembly but the fact is that expending the money of Ministries, Agencies and Departments on hearings when you are still going to go ahead and do your thing is a waste of public funds. It does not justify the man hours that are involved in planning for those Budgetary items as well as the sleepless nights of some civil servants in preparing the Budgets and attending the defence sessions at the National Assembly.

And that is before talking about the Constitutionality of effecting such changes unilaterally, and on matters which, Fashola argues, are the functions of State legislatures. There several calls for the cost of Governance to be reduced to the extent that it is possible. Maximizing the efforts and funds expended on public procedures should be a critical and effective part of such means, even before any expenditures or overheads are to be removed.

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