Nigeria’s corrupt budgeting: What our President needs to know

Do our President and his aides not know of the existence and popularity of the term-lobbying?  Of course they are fully aware of it because lobbying has for long been part of the Nigerian factor. The concept was in active use by even the ruthless military government of General Sani Abacha which was supposedly uninterested […]

Do our President and his aides not know of the existence and popularity of the term-lobbying?  Of course they are fully aware of it because lobbying has for long been part of the Nigerian factor. The concept was in active use by even the ruthless military government of General Sani Abacha which was supposedly uninterested in public opinion. At home, that government set up a council headed by General Jeremiah Useni for the purpose of influencing opinion leaders especially traditional rulers to support government. On the international scene, some lobbyists that camouflaged as religious reformers of the Baptist faith in 1996 reportedly received about $350, 000 to lobby the administration of President Clinton on behalf of Nigeria. For awhile, the Atlanta based Goodworks International was said to be a lobbying instrument for Nigeria during the tenure of President Obasanjo. There is no doubt too that our present government appreciates the efficacy of lobbying hence we have a Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly matters whose duty is to ensure that matters presented by the executive to the legislature are favourably perceived. The body language of these two arms of government shows clearly at all times that there is hardly any matter between them that is not subjected to intense lobbying. It therefore does not appear fair that it is only the lobbying by heads of MDAs that elicits presidential anger. What is not in doubt though is that there can be positive and negative lobbying and that the latter which gives undue advantage to lobbyists is what irks President Jonathan. But the President needs to know that the MDAs have no option as negative lobbying is the established and subsisting method of getting something close to what they actually require to run their organizations

Our President also needs to know that apart from his own personal desire to transform Nigeria, many government officials are not committed to his transformation agenda. As a result not much including the budgeting system has changed. In 2004, government uncovered a- N55million “public relations lobby fund” allegedly used by the Ministry of Education to influence the legislature to increase its budget. The issue led to the removal from office of the Senate President as well as the Minister of Education. President Obasanjo then announced that his administration was set to deal with other MDAs found to have also ‘bribed’ legislators concerning the budget. Nothing much happened thereafter except that the MDAs that got scared of the threat and avoided lobbying lost out. Our personal experience was that the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) got a zero allocation for capital expenditure every year from 2003 t0 2007 because this writer who was its chief executive did not lobby.

Another thing the President must appreciate is that negative lobbying in Nigeria does not necessarily originate from the ‘giver’.  Indeed, corruption stories in our country are replete with how the ‘taker’ is more often than not the initiator. Therefore, negative lobbying cannot end simply because government has threatened to deal with erring MDAs. As a matter of fact, to counsel the National Assembly to ‘drive away’ lobbyists misses the point entirely. The budgeting process and procedures put in place in the legislature are quite cumbersome.  To pass through them all and arrive at a favourable change in the allocation to a particular agency presupposes that such a body utilized a comprehensive method by which every relevant unit was reached!  Interestingly, it is not quite easy to fault a law maker in Nigeria. The story of Mallam Nasir el Rufai who in 2003 accused some specific senators of demanding millions of naira from him so as to endorse his ministerial nomination is relevant here. The senate itself investigated the matter and cleared its affected members while declaring el rufai’s allegation as false. Well, neither the civil society nor the senators themselves believed the version of the senate. So we may never be able to do much about the legislature being part of the corruption of negative lobbying.

However the story does not end with lobbying the legislature to inflate the budget of an agency. The lobbying process thereafter moves to the executive branch where each MDA needs to lobby to get its ‘approved’ budget released. Again this aspect is not in any way new.  Almost three decades ago, there was the scandal of how officials of the National Handling Cargo Company allegedly bribed some staff of the Ministry of Transport to facilitate the release of their 1983 subvention. That situation of ‘warrant without cash backing’ until lobbying is done has not changed. It cannot change except government takes appropriate decisive steps to change it. For example, it is not enough to pursue shadows rather than substance as was done in 2002 when government imagined that what inhibited the smooth disbursement of funds after budget approval was lack of coordination between the office of the Accountant General of the federation and the Central Bank.  This prompted the training of relevant government officials from September 15, 2002 to May 15, 2005 in what was described as the Nigeria Budget Process Support Project sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) – a training that was said to have dramatically improved the operations and capacities of the participants. Unfortunately, improvement in technical capacities of operatives may not translate to a reduction in corrupt tendencies.

One of the things begging to be done now is to put a halt to the practice of delayed budgeting in Nigeria, as the numerous delays in our system encourage among other things negative lobbying. This year, it took four months for the budget to be passed by the legislature. Thereafter, it took the President’s aides a whole month to study the distortions introduced before the President could sign. Our budgeting system would improve if all the delays are avoided and all negative lobbyists –not just MDAs- are penalized because we need to remember that in every crime the giver and the taker are both guilty.