Five months after President Muhammadu Buhari submitted the 2017 budget proposal, it has finally been passed by both chambers of the National Assembly, with a slight increase of N200 billion on the original estimates of N7.28 trillion.

Just like last year, the passing of this year’s budget also had its fair share of controversies, albeit much less than the infamous “budget padding” scandal, when Senator Danjuma Goje (APC – Gombe North) accused the police of taking the budget proposal from his house in a raid together with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Thankfully, the documents were “found” and the budget was passed just in the nick of time, as the implementation of the 2016 budget was to end this month; after that, monies cannot be released from the Federation Account without appropriate legislation for it, which is the 2017 Appropriations Bill.

As always, the devil is in the details, especially in the case of the federal budget, which is a voluminous document of 1470 pages. The major details of the budget are that it is calculated using the crude oil benchmark price of $44 per barrel at an average exchange rate of N305/$, and will have about 33% of it financed by debt.

Also, for the first time in a long while, capital expenditure is almost 30% of the budget, and recurrent spending is down to 41%. However, the costs of servicing our debts are almost a quarter of the budget, with N1.49 trillion allocated to service domestic debts, N175.89 billion for servicing foreign debts and N177.46 billion for a sinking fund to retire maturing loans.

With our budget deficit increasing, it also means that the cost of servicing it will increase, with the budget being financed either from the sales of bonds, treasury bills and borrowing from the Central Bank of Nigeria. At the projected GDP growth rate of 3% (pdf) in the budget, it is very likely that we will paying off the debts for a while; however, investing it in infrastructure will accelerate economic growth more than using to pay recurrent expenditure.

However, as in previous budget screenings, there is a lack of thoroughness to how the budget proposal is scrutinized. The Appropriation Bill is riddled with ridiculous line items and allocations for projects that cannot be justified, such as the State House budgeting N27million for “residential rent” and N8.5million for anti-corruption, whatever that means.

Almost every ministry, department or agency has similar line items that are either vague by definition or have mind-boggling sums allocated to them. With thorough screening, the amount of fat that can be cut off from the budget can be conservatively estimated to be between N300 and N500billion.

It is a shame that the National Assembly with 469 members, its retinue of staff for the committees and aides for individual legislators cannot thoroughly screen the budget and make the Federal Government justify each proposed spending when one blogger, Saatah Nubari did so in this budget analysis series of his.

One shining light from this year’s budget as passed by the National Assembly is that the legislature has for the first time in many years released the breakdown of its proposed spending rather than just a single-line item as it used to before, a result of persistent advocacy efforts and pressure on the Assembly.

Now the ball is in the court of the executive to implement the budget: full implementation of the budget has eluded Nigeria for many years – while recurrent expenditure is always implemented in full, capital budget implementation has averaged 52% with only 2013 being the exception with its implementation up to 60%.

It is important that the Federal Government removes bottlenecks to speedy and effective budget implementation: whether it is through the streamlining of contract awarding processes, faster procurement processes or timely release of funds. It is this implementation that will make the budget come alive and have an impact on the lives of Nigerians.

Nigerians have waited so long to see the Appropriations Bill passed. It is now time to make it work.