2012 Budget and Matters Arising

Since the beginning of this democratic dispensation, the executive has deployed one method in its illegalities against the people and the legislature. Anytime the executive came under scrutiny of the legislature, it deploys the same tactics of puerile propaganda and smear campaign to cover up for its misdeeds and grave constitutional infractions. We have seen […]

Since the beginning of this democratic dispensation, the executive has deployed one method in its illegalities against the people and the legislature. Anytime the executive came under scrutiny of the legislature, it deploys the same tactics of puerile propaganda and smear campaign to cover up for its misdeeds and grave constitutional infractions.

We have seen since the year 2000 the protracted battle between the presidency and the House of Representatives especially on matters relating to either failure to implement the appropriation law as passed or outrageous extra budgetary expenditures by the executive with recklessness and impunity. The moment the legislature moved to deploy its constitutional authority in addressing the executive’s excesses, the more a round of campaign of calumny against the parliament were began by the executive and the unfortunate thing has been that the people who are shortchanged by their executives have been used to either quell the legislative policing or, in many cases, the legislators themselves became victims of public outcry.

Remember General Obasanjo’s theory of ‘a joke taken too far?’ Nigerians lived with executive excesses and near total failure to compliance with appropriation act for the eight years that he reigned in the Villa. President Umaru Yar’adua came with his own style but one thing that I am sure of is that the president’s state of health was mainly responsible for putting him out of control of the major variables of governance. But even at that, the 2008 appropriation was met with serious controversies on whether the parliament had the authority to alter the estimates as submitted by the president to the extent that President Yar’adua was threatening to go court.

I wish he did. This matter would have since been resolved by the apex court. I don’t know why the executive arm would arrogate to itself the monopoly of wisdom of the interpretation of the meaning and spirit of the constitutional provisions. President Yar’adua was probably advised by his legal team against the judicial option and rather returned to the parliament for a political solution.

One does not need to be a lawyer to know that clearly the major items in the function of the Nigerian legislature are law making, oversight and representation. The most important item on the list of law making is appropriation law. The most important item on the oversight function is monitoring the implementation of appropriation law while the major item on the representation item function is that every section of the country and constituency partake in the process of the crafting and implementation of the appropriation laws of the land.

Accordingly, therefore, the parliament is at the liberty to adjust forward and or backward estimates submitted to it by the executive. That is what the constitution means and that is what it is in western liberal democracy, a contraption we desperately, even if in error, are copying.

Since the coming of Goodluck Jonathan in the last two years, things have not radically changed; in fact they have degenerated from bad to worse. The implementation of the 2012 budget especially has become a very serious issue as the executive seems unwilling to go by the laws and instead is implementing the budget selectively.

Since the beginning of the year, government finances seem inadequate and this is clearly shown in the manner the federation account meetings have been held. Allegations of excessive internal and external borrowings continue to surge. Sale of crude in the international market hasn’t substantially reduced while price remained high but income accruable to the nation seems to be diminishing. The meaning of that is that there is a break down in accountability and the recent executive posturing suggests that nobody has the right to ask or question what is going on the country today.

The motion by the House minority leader Femi Gbajabiamila and the subsequent debate and adoption of a motion to commence impeachment proceedings against the president in September if the selective manner and failure to implement the 2012 budget as passed by the National Assembly continues has since been met with the usual trick of executive high handedness and threats on several fronts.

The whole machinery of government has been rolled out to deal with both Femi and the ‘exuberant’ members of the House. Nigerians again are the foot soldiers being made to shut up the parliament in its attempt to check the excesses of an incapable executive arm. The parliament and not the executive arm is now subjected to all forms of scrutiny on the issue of propriety or otherwise when in reality over 97% of the national appropriation is in the hands of the executive and that is the money that is stolen and that is why nothing works in Nigeria. Monies for light, roads, schools, hospitals and other critical infrastructure are in the hands of the executive arm and they are hardly accounted for but at the end of the year, they are said to have been spent yet with nothing on ground to suggest any form of justification for such expenditures.

I think the view must change and Nigerians who are often instigated by the executive arm all the times to dissipate more energy on trying to deal with pickpockets while armed robbers hold the nation to ransom. Nigerians must be more vigilant in doing what is right.

The citizens must know that they are the vanguards of democracy. They ought to be vigilant and keep check on their representatives at all levels. This executive deceit is responsible for the failure of Nigerians to get value for their monies. So long as we allow ourselves to be deceived by those in authority so long we will continue to find ourselves in this state of endemic backwardness.

The House should go ahead and make real its threat if by the time it reconvenes the executive arm has not changed. The seeming infallibility and monopoly of conventional wisdom which people like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala display out of their weak structural functional economic theorem has no place in the development of third world economies. They probably don’t know that or they are deliberate in holding the nations down. This has to stop. The legislature must be up and doing and in the process, popular support of the citizens is critical.