In the middle of May, the National Assembly passed the 2018 budget after seven months of deliberation. But when President Muhammadu Buhari received the documents, it was hardly recognizable from the bill he presented to both chambers of the legislature in November 2017.
It took the president 35 days to consider the 2018 budget and make his mind up on whether to sign it or not. Why did it take that long? Because the alterations made by the National Assembly – effecting cuts in the allocation to 4,700 projects to the tune of N347 billion – raised questions as to whether this was going to be a budget that can be implemented. The cuts made by the National Assembly affect major power, road, education, healthcare and aviation projects some of which have been under consideration for a long time and for which there is huge expectation of a definite march towards completion.
Apparently, the National Assembly has its own priorities which are different from the Executive. Despite both arms of government being run by the ruling APC, there has been no shortage of disagreement between the leaders virtually since the dawn of the Buhari administration. From the 2016 budget cycle till now, there has been accusations of budget padding against the leadership of the House of Representatives leading to the suspension of a member who supported and still supports President Buhari. In 2017, the Senate had a confrontation with the Minister of Power Works and Housing, Batatunde Fashola, who accused the lawmakers of replacing major projects of the Ministry with small scale schemes like borehole provision. There was talk at the time for the matter to be settled by the Supreme Court as to the limits to which the National Assembly could alter the Executive’s proposal for a given fiscal year but both parties decided against seeking that definition at the time.
“The logic behind the Constitutional direction that budgets should be proposed by the Executive is that, it is the Executive that knows & defines its policies & projects” President Buhari said after signing this budget on Wednesday. He has granted his assent despite strenuously voicing his frustration with Saraki and Dogara’s massive footprints on his 2018 plans. Perhaps Buhari signed in recognition that this would be the penultimate political hurdle before seeking victory in the 2019 elections for which the façade of a united party is necessary, but Nigerians still need a definite answer on these issues.
Why has the National Assembly introduced 6,403 projects of their own into the 2018 budget amounting to N578 billion, some of which, according to the President, “have not been properly conceptualized, designed and costed and will therefore be difficult to execute”? Knowing they cannot execute projects, why did the lawmakers not get the Executive’s buy-in in the enlistment of new projects before passing the budget? And why has the Assembly raised its own budget without any justifiable defense other than a questionable statement that it is not as high as pre-2015 figures?
Speaking for members of the House of Representatives, Mr Abdulrazak Saad Namdas said the representatives “must include projects that will directly affect the common man positively” because “some of the projects designed by the executive, as high-sounding as their names suggest, do not meet the needs of the common man”. Well, I would be hard pressed to be convinced that leaving all of the N2 billion take off fund for the Maritime University Delta state would not be for the common man, more than the N13.5 million running cost which the legislators have never accounted for.
Budget irregularities are an undesirable norm in Nigeria that must now be addressed if the goods of governance are to reach everyone equitably. The former Minister of Finance Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala recorded how the Jonathan government had to let the National Assembly have their way and last year, her successor Kemi Adeosun, funded about 34 projects inserted by the Assembly costing more than N11.5 billion. Nigerians deserve better than this arbitrariness that involves the satisfaction and massaging of parliamentary egos especially if the process is shrouded in opaqueness.
The Constitution empowers the Executive to initiate projects by presenting a budget to the Assembly but the lawmakers also have the right to amend these in as far as they are to become law in Nigeria. Unfortunately, the interpretation of these powers have been far from objective by both arms with politics and the quest for superiority often trumping patriotism and the national interest. There has to be an arbiter who prevents this derangement from totally eroding confidence in the budgetary process. The Supreme Court justices could do with making an important definition to mark an important intervention in Nigeria’s democratic experiment, for good.
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