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2009 Budget Controversy: Selective Implementation Or Impaired Discretion? By Ifeanyi Izeze
It was the height of insincerity and self deceit for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leadership to accuse the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) and Action Congress (AC) as being responsible for the current threat by the House of Representatives to impeach President Umaru Yar’adua over his selective or rather non-implementation of the 2009 Appropriation Act.
Though the threat is an empty one, the crux of the matter is very clear and should not be mixed with party politics. President Yar’adua on March 10 2009 signed into law the reconciled N3.1 trillion 2009 budget after the bill was passed by the National Assembly. The House had earlier passed N 3.087 trillion as against the N3.04 approved by the Senate and even far above the N2.91 trillion originally proposed by the President
In defending the disparity, the House had said that in the past (2007 and 2008 budgets), President Yar’adua complained that it was unable to implement the budget because of inadequate funds. And so “if inadequate funding was why the executive abandoned projects and returned the money as unspent funds, the House Committee on Appropriation wanted to avoid that in 2009.”
Regrettably, the same misfortune the House wanted to avoid is replaying itself.
Was the 2009 budget passed by the National Assembly and signed into law by the President? With the passage of the bill and signing into law, the 2009 Appropriation Act became a law that must be obeyed. And where that is not followed, the punishment is very clear.
The real issue here is that the budget is not being implemented as passed by law, and the National Assembly does not need either the ANPP or AC to tell them that the President is breaking the law and should be reminded. It is a very clear case.
The Assembly is insisting that the budget is already an Act of Parliament after he had assented to it and advised the President to go to court if he could not implement it as passed. Has the President gone to court or will he go? No!
Nigerian politicians should please help us to understand them. The same leadership of the PDP that is accusing everybody for the failure of the President had earlier in a rare move that practically fell short of condemning the current near-zero drive in the implementation of Yar’adua’s economic policy, on June 16, 2009 expressed worry over what it called “poor budget implementation” of the administration. So how do we reconcile their current accusation of opposition parties when on its own it had raised serious concern over the issue?
The despicable magnitude of non-performance or rather handicap of this government should be worrisome to everybody who is alive in this country even the PDP leadership. And this must have informed the decision of the party to interrogate cabinet ministers on budget implementation and their contributions to the implementation of Yar’adua’s seven-point agenda.
The media had earlier raised the alarm that as at April 31 2009, the N78 billion capital votes for the first quarter of 2009 were idle at various accounts of Central Bank
At the end of the first half of the budgeted year, the Appropriation Committee of the House of Representatives seems to be geared-up for a confrontation with the President as the lawmakers claim “the budget is only 20% implemented and if care is not taken, we may end up like this”. According to the lawmakers, “The evidence before us shows that the executive has defaulted in budget implementation and they should be reminded that this is an impeachable offence.”
Capital project implementation varied widely from the 2009 Appropriation Act. Although there was no shortfall during the period under consideration as already disclosed by the House Appropriation Committee, yet there was selective implementation of capital budget since many projects which were included in the Act were deliberately not funded not for reasons of unavailability of funds but strictly on the President’s discretions.
As revealed, Government revenue was N27.98 billion higher than the budgeted figures during the first four months of the year 2009, while N119.12bn was drawn from the Excess Crude Account to augment the shortfall in the Federation Account.
The Federal Government got N51.79bn or 52.68% of the funds drawn from the Excess Crude Account, and also realised N127.37bn from sale of government houses and other transfers.
Despite assurances that the recurrent budget had been fully released as passed, some of the Ministries’ Departments and Agencies (MDAs) were not given their correct allocations. In fact, releases to MDAs varied between 19 %-50%”. Releases to cover the first half that is 50 percent of the budget has been allegedly released to cover the allocation for the first half of the year.
Although the ‘Parliamentary jokers’ equally have credibility and sensibility problems too as Nigerians can no longer decipher calls for the interest of the public from maneuvers for self agrandisement by our lawmakers, there is a very clear difference between frugality or fiscal discipline and outright stupidity and if we separate them, we will make better judgments.
You are keeping money as unspent funds (of course the balance of the better part that have been stolen) when there is nothing anybody can point as tangible achievement in terms of infrastructure development anywhere across the country for the over two years of the administration and you think you are frugal? Oodeh buruku!
How can anybody reconcile that a president that preaches rule of law has single-handedly decided to selectively implement the budget which was duly passed as a law and endorsed for him to implement?
From obvious indications, those who claim to be ruling us seem not to know what the real Nigerians are yearning for. How many cities not to talk of villages can boast of availability of portable water from government water works? Where are the roads? Do we still have public schools including universities in Nigeria? Can anybody boldly describe those huts scattered all over our communities and even some cities and urban centres as primary schools where in some cases the children sit under trees to receive lessons?
Anybody who feels at home with the way things are running in government must have advanced malaria. The pathetic state of the nation’s infrastructure and the perceived nonchalance of our rulers have reached criminal dimension that deserves the judgment of God against all the people who claim to be running the affairs of the state on our behalf.
IFEANYI IZEZE IS AN ABUJA-BASED CONSULTANT (iizeze@yahoo.com)
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