By Chukwudi Nweje
In this interview, member, House of Representatives, representing Ughelli North/South/Udu federal constituency of Delta State, Francis Waive speaks on the 2024 budget proposal among other issues
What can you say about President Bola Tinubu’s budget of Renewed Hope?
I want to start by appreciating Mr. President because he delivered what I consider the budget we need at this very moment, at a time when people are suffering and there is the need to fix the economic challenges that people are going through. Mr. President presented what I consider a very realistic budget.
If you look at all the benchmarks; the production of crude oil at 1.78 million barrels per day, the exchange rate at N750 to the dollar; if you look at all of that, you will agree that this is very realistic. Then if you look at all the provisions made for food security, the security challenges that we face in the country, roads and infrastructure, the private and public partnerships that he brought into the budget, the total figure of the budget and the policy directions, you will want to commend him as somebody who has the vision to solve the problems that we face as a nation.
Temporarily, the removal of fuel subsidy is a necessary evil that must happen someday, and it had to happen. This President dared to take the bull by the horns. What he has done is how to manage the situation, so that shortly people will be able to rejoice with life going back to normal. We are not in that position where a few people are taking advantage of our oil resources and then countries nearby are being fed with free oil as it were, not just cheap oil from Nigeria. So, it is a budget of Renewed Hope as he termed it. I do appreciate that.
Let us talk about the cost of running the government itself at all levels, beyond the executive now. There has been public outcry over purchases by the National Assembly members not deemed in the people’s interest. How does that impact budget implementation, we still remember the issue of budget padding by the National Assembly. Can you give us more insight on that as well?
There are some basic things that you need to be able to do your job. If you are a lawmaker, you need computers; you need lawyers as your aides and all of that. You need a vehicle to do your oversight. These are basic things that people take for granted. When it comes to lawmakers; perhaps, because of the many years of military rule, we do not appreciate the fact that without the legislature, there will be no democracy in the country.
If you have the executive and the judiciary, you might have a monarchy or perhaps military rule or dictatorship or something. If you are going to have democracy, you must have the legislature. The legislature is the representative of the people. Over 200 million Nigerians cannot sit together and take decisions, so they elect representatives and these people must necessarily come together to do the job of collating data, know where the shoes pinched the average Nigerian, and be able to put things together with the executive.
So, these things are necessities but because we are not used to having a legislature throughout our history, there is this suspicion of the legislature when they do their job and demand the basic things required for the job. You don’t have that suspicion when dealing with the executive, because you are used to seeing a governor with a convoy of 50 cars but to see one lawmaker with one vehicle, it is challenging to our people but this must change.
We understand that this comes from the civil servants that we oversee. These are people that we check and audit. All over the world in every sphere of human activity, the “auditee” and the auditor are never in agreement. We have a situation where the “auditee” sponsors a massive media onslaught, many of them unproven, many of them are false and completely lies. Many of them are half-truths sold to the gullible public to make the legislature look evil.
This is not in the interest of our democracy. It is not in the interest of our future as a people. Nigerians must appreciate the legislature and see every legislator as a friend, as a representative and as being there for the people’s interest. Also, see the legislature as being there for the good of the common man. We must change the mentality of the way we look at the legislative arm of government. That is the only way we will be able to appreciate the fact that if we buy computers for them, it is not a crime, if we buy them vehicles to do their oversight, that is not a crime.
The oversight particularly is the issue in contention. The oversight is when the legislature goes to the executive to cross-check whether what was in the budget is implemented as stated. Any of the team will try to truncate that process. If you say why do we need cars, you forget that other arms of government also use vehicles, computers and other things to run their part of the government assignment. I think that is the challenge that we have and we have got to face it and we have got to do our job and the country will be better for it.
In providing the necessities for the lawmakers, some analysts would argue that you can patronise made-in-Nigeria products and back to the issue of the budget, national defence, security and economic stability are priorities. From experience, increased military spending over the years has not made Nigeria safer; how can the Federal Government plug all loopholes that can affect budget implementation this time around?
First, you must realise that we have a brand new president. This is his first budget, so we must give him the benefit of the doubt that he is going to do things differently and we are going to get results from Mr. President’s initiative. In addition, this is the 10th Assembly under a new leadership, and Mr. Speaker particularly has emphasised that we are going to do oversight very thoroughly and effectively, which is why all those requirements to do the job are being provided.
I believe that the President is doing his job and the legislature is being effective. We are going to find a budget that is implemented to the full and that is result-oriented for the average Nigerian. That is what we can look forward to, I can assure you.