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By IFEANYI MADUAKO
The National Assembly is set to reconvene from its recess which it embarked on after a normal legislative calendar which ended on June. Before the National Assembly went on its long vacation, the nation witnessed a macabre dance and sabre rattling from the hallowed chambers, especially the House of Representatives. The nation and the world at large woke up on June 17, 2016, to be regaled with a surfeit of allegations from a member of the House Representatives in the person of Honourable Abdulmunim Jubrin. Hon. Jubrin, who was until then the chairman of House of Representatives committee on Appropriation, has alleged that the presiding officers, that is, Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara and Rt. Hon.Yusuf Lasun and some principal officers of the House had surreptitiously smuggled some figures into the budget for selfish and pecuniary motives as against the collective interest of Nigerians which offence was termed padding.
The principal officers concerned, had in turn accused Hon Jubrin of being the architect or culprit of any budget infractions. As the National Assembly reconvenes this week, this budget padding brouhaha will definitely come to the front burner once again as the allegations were left unresolved before the recess. As an economist, I know budgeting or budget preparation involves a gamut of inputs from various Ministries, Agencies and Departments (MDAs). Budget preparation is a serious task that should not be trivialized. The act or process of budgeting involves the executive making a proposal to the legislature which it intends to achieve in a fiscal year.
The Executive formulates its capital and recurrent expenditures in a fiscal year using an anticipated bench mark in a derivable income from fiscal and monetary policies of the government. The template of the executive or its bench mark is then subjected to scrutiny by the legislature which has the constitutional responsibility to alter the template as submitted by the executive as it deems fit after mutual bargaining by both sides. Now, before the executive submits its budget to the legislature, Ministries, Departments and Agencies make inputs by submitting their various individual budgets to the Ministry of Budgets and National Planning for vetting and onward submission to the legislature. The major function of Ministry of Budget and National Planning is to collate and coagulate the budget as submitted by MDAs. The Ministry of Budget will then vet the budgets of these MDAs to see if what they have submitted are realizable within the available limited resources in a fiscal year.
The next stage will be to submit aggregate executive budget to the President, who is the head of the executive for onward transmission, submission and laying before the joint session of the National Assembly. Even after this rigorous process, the National Assembly is duty bound to peruse, study and scrutinize the submission of the executive further as guaranteed and enshrined in the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended). The various Committees of the National Assembly which comprise, the Senate and the House of Representatives will further undertake what is called Budget Defence where each ministry is drilled on its proposal in a fiscal year and how it intends to achieve the budget it has submitted. After both chambers of the National Assembly had concluded, the harmonized version of both chambers where all the principal officers are present will now be submitted to the President for his assent.
If the Senate alters any figure in the budget, the House of Reps must agree to it before it leaves the National Assembly through the Presidential Aides on National Assembly. Both chambers must agree for any alteration as Nigeria practices a bi-cameral legislature. Now, the salient questions that agitate the minds of many a Nigerian are: Does Nigeria have three versions of the budget, each for Senate, House of Reps and the Executives? Is the House of Reps budget different from that of the Senate and the Executives? How come there was no padding in the Senate’s budget but only in the House of Reps version? Senator Danjuma Goje is the Senate Chairman on Appropriation, how come he didn’t notice the insertions by the House of Reps principal officers, since a harmonized version was submitted back to the Executives? During budget defence, did any Ministry, Department and Agency complain that the figure it submitted was not what it was defending?
Did Dogara and Confederates hijack the budget which was on transit after the Senate and House of Reps had harmonized it and then padded it? Now, when the padded budget reached the table of the President for assent, did the President sign it without studying it again? I believe that the President re-studied the budget once more because we all saw the face of the President, his Vice and Minister of National Planning, Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, perusing the budget in the President’s Office. Even if the President had no time to study a voluminous budget line by line, word by word, it was the duty of the Ministry of National Planning and Budget to have scrutinized the budget to see if there was any padding or infraction. Did the ministry fail to do this? It is ironic that Hon. Jubrin, who incidentally moved the motion for nomination of Rt. Hon. Dogara for the post of Speakership on June 9, 2015, has fallen apart with his right hand man in just a year due to acts of omission or commission.
The National Assembly must know that it is incumbent on it to reign on the executive by performing its statutory functions of unblemished appropriation with adequate checks and balances. The four hundred and sixty nine (469) members of these hallowed chambers must eschew bitterness and parochial interest as the destinies, hopes and aspirations of over 180million Nigerians rest squarely on their shoulders. Without the National Assembly, there is no democracy as the legislature is the fulcrum upon which democracy revolves.
Maduako writes from Owerri via [email protected]
