Crying Over Poor Capital Budget Implementation

Crying Over Poor Capital Budget Implementation

Rahaman Onike

The recent exchanges between the Federal Government and the House of Representatives over 2012 poor capital budget implementation are not only desired but necessary in an ideal democratic system. The periodic evaluation of budget performance by the House is indeed parts of over-sight role of the parliament in a democracy and this is necessary to ensure that the budget is faithfully implemented by the Executive.

Half way into the end of the financial year, the impact of the budget of over ₦4.8 trillion is yet to be truly felt by the average Nigerians as a result of poor capital budget implementation. This abnormally has become a culture in Nigeria considering the level of budget performances since the return to civil rule in 1999; there has never been a year the capital budget attained up to 75 per cent implementation.

Obviously, the capital budget is of significant importance to the public as major source of funding capital projects. It is imperative to point out that capital budget has direct impacts on the lives of the people and the level of its implementation remains a yardstick to measure the performance of the government of the day.

In this regard, the anger and the concern of the House over the poor implementation of the budget are understandable and fully justified. The anger is of course shared by the public, for there is no real evidence that the capital budget has been given adequate priority in the implementation of the National budget.

The impeachment threat issued recently at the plenary session on July 19 by the House of Representatives needs further analysis as the nation remains inundated with debates and postulations about the propriety of the threat to commence impeachment proceedings against President Goodluck Jonathan if the capital budget is not properly implemented by September when the House reconvenes from vacation.

Even with the threat of impeachment, there is considerable doubt that the Federal Government could meet the deadline or achieve 70 per cent capital budget implementation as demanded by the House.

It is indeed worrisome that practically every year the implementation of the budget has been the major source of friction between the Executive and the House. In 2010 and 2011, the same accusation of poor budget implementation was made against the Executive.

While reflecting further on the cause of the face-off, it is not a surprise that there was no serious contention on the re-current budget as this involves mainly the statutory allocation and general cost of administration/overheads.

One funny aspect of the whole feud is simile contradiction observed in the statistics presented by the government in defence of the accusation of poor capital budget implementation. Whether the rate of the budget implementation was deliberated exaggerated or a mere statistical goof, the fact still remains that the inaccuracy or the distortion of the official figures and facts has caused an embarrassing situation to the nation.

The initial 56 per cent capital budget implementation claim by the Federal Government when properly analysed is misleading and as such, it is worthy of condemnation. Even with the retraction, blame needs to be apportioned and apology tendered for the exaggeration of the nation’s budget implementation performance.

For the avoidance of doubts, the retraction was contained in documents submitted to the Senate Committee on appropriation by officials of the Finance Ministry during an interactive session recently held by the Senate. According to the documents, the ₦184,84 billion when calculated against the total capital budget of ₦1.519 trillion is ₦12.16 per cent of performance. Indeed, the performance rating is truly an evidence of poor budget implementation. Assuming the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonja Iweala had initially alluded to the poor performance rate in the budget implementation, the ongoing face-off between the Executive and the legislature ought to have been averted.

There is also the need to put in proper perspective the excuse that the constituency projects of the National Assembly members was part of the cause of delay in the implementation of the capital budget. Evidence abound that allocation for constituency projects was not unilaterally injected into the nation’s capital budget by the lawmakers but it was introduced based on agreement between the Executive and the Legislature. Even if the constituency projects were introduced into the budget at a stage in the approval process, the abnormality could not be a reasonable excuse for poor capital budget implementation.

More importantly, the total removal of 60 billion constituency projects from the Federal budget of ₦1.519 trillion, the nation will still be left with a capital budget ₦1.459 trillion; hence implementing ₦184,84 billion out of the new figure is still a failure in a standard scoring template.

Of equal importance is the Executive accusation that the National Assembly re-ordered the Executive budget as this consequently caused delay in the capital budget implementation. In my view, when the executive budgetary provisions were re-ordered, it brings into focus the ideals of democracy. The essence of budget re-ordering is to ensure collaboration between the Executive and the legislature in the budget formulation, approval process and implementation.

Again, if the recent experience of this nation in budget implementation is anything to go by, the Nigeria debt profile will continue to rise. Over the years, the country has not recorded budget surplus. The 2012 budget is considerably a deficit budget with a gap of nearly ₦2 trillion or nearly half of the total budget. The implication is that the government may have to borrow from the banking sector or other sources to fully implement the capital budget.

Similarly, there are a lot of social irritations associated with the budgetary allocation for the implementation of constituency projects as most of the projects in the past were poorly designed and implemented. As a matter of fact, there should be quality control measures in place to ensure that funds for constituency projects are well utilized and properly accounted for by each member of the National Assembly. Without proper accountability and efficient quality control measures in place, funds meant for constituency projects are likely to end up in private accounts of some of the legislators, their family members and friends.

As the nation is gradually matching into another fiscal year, the slow pace of capital budget implementation sincerely calls for worry and serious national concern. Of course, if we continue to implement the capital budget at the pace of 12.6 per cent every three months, the nation is bound to record failure in the implementation of the 2012 budget. Government therefore needs to show more commitment to the full implementation of the budget and be ready to accept blames in the case of budget implementation failure.

While watching with keen interest the unfolding events in the nation’s political scene ahead of September deadline given by the House to commence impeachment proceedings against President Goodluck Jonathan, it is hoped the government will rise up to implement the capital budget with 75 per cent performance rating to avert the possible impeachment and for prosperity to judge Mr. President as a performer.