Fred Itua, Abuja
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, yesterday, said the National Assembly will not be rubber-stamp for the Executive.
Dogara, who spoke at the opening of a joint public hearing by Senate and House of Representatives committees on Appropriations, said late submission and poor implementation of budgets by the executive was shameful.
Dogara listed some bills passed by the National Assembly, geared towards strengthening the budget process and lamented how they were vetoed by President Muhammadu Buhari, despite their significance to strengthening institutions of government.
He urged ministers and other heads of agencies, present at the public hearing, to ensure that the 2019 budget gets at least 70 per cent implementation, especially the capital expenditurecomponents.
He said: “The public, and indeed, stakeholders here must never feel that the budget does not reflect their values, or that the process is too cumbersome for them to understand, or that they cannot make any difference in the process. This is why Parliament, in its wisdom, created this opportunity for public and stakeholder dialogue on the budget.
“Therefore, we must not miss this opportunity to critically appraise the document that is before us and proffer useful tools that would help reshape the budget into a document that captures national values and priorities. This is the task before all of us today and believe me, we can make a difference if we are determined to re-write the wrongs of the past.
“Over the years, the main problem with our budget, as submitted by the executive, is that it does not reflect National values and priorities. The budget, more often than not, only reflects the values and priorities of those who help the president in drafting it. The integrity of the project selection process has always being the bane of our national budgets.
“I regret to say that until we eliminate these problems, we will always have non-implementable national budgets which cannot be relied upon by policymakers in establishing spending priorities.
“It is very painful that, for some years now, our budget process has been an exercise in either or a combination of audacious optimism and/or hypocrisy involving key actors putting together a budget that they fully know will at best be implemented up to 45 percent, which is by all standards below average.
“How many of us would be proud of a child who consistently performs below average in his examinations? How many of us here are proud of our below average budget performance all these years? Our below average budget performance is the main reason why Nigeria has remained a major promise as our national potentials cannot be released without effective budget planning and execution.
“Let me re-emphasise that this parliament can never be a rubber stamp and neither are we prepared to surrender our constitutionally assigned rights of checks on the executive.
“It is unfortunate, however, that many commentators always ignorantly accuse the National Assembly of delaying the Appropriations Bill; as if we are meant to urgently rubber stamp whatever budget estimates that is submitted to us by the executive.
“If we fail to scrutinize the budget proposals, it will not only amount to abdication of our constitutional responsibilities as legislators but a betrayal of the mandate of our constituents.”