Now that we can count up to 100

Our state governors had complained of being short-changed by a federal government that keeps dipping its hands into the kitty (federation account) before it is shared. The Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), whose membership is composed by the government, says the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is yet to remit over $3.996 billion to […]

Our state governors had complained of being short-changed by a federal government that keeps dipping its hands into the kitty (federation account) before it is shared. The Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), whose membership is composed by the government, says the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is yet to remit over $3.996 billion to the federation account in 2012 alone. The recently suspended Governor of the CBN, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, insists that the figure is about $20 billion for the last two years, while the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, along with the NNPC, says the actual figure is somewhere in-between. Engineer Hamman Tukur had fought this battle for several years before his exit from Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, where he was chairman.
In addition, NEITI had alerted the nation to another swindle. It agreed with the Swiss-based Berne Declaration that oil companies operating in Nigeria short-changed the country to the tune of $6.8 to $7.8 billion (about N1.3 trillion) in unpaid oil taxes, royalties, fees and bonuses. Many observers have pointed out the discrepancies between what these companies claim to be taking out of Nigeria and the amount of Nigerian oil being sold in the open market, only a part of which could be explained by oil theft. The NEITI Executive Secretary, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, told the House of Representatives that based on their audit of NNPC accounts, they have independently arrived at similar conclusions with the Berne Declaration that between 2009 and 2011, Nigeria lost about $22.8 billion.  Even the Budget Office has been accused of overshooting the budget by over N2.6 trillion through mysterious allocation of billions to agencies and parastatals that never requested for them. The Kaduna-based National Teachers’ Institute, for example, recently admitted to the National Assembly that it found N791 billion deposited in its account which it did not ask for. Add to these the trillions that are routinely collected by agencies that unilaterally spend them without “appropriation” and we can surmise that the whole matter is too opaque even to the National Assembly. Day in day out, we are bombarded with these and similar revelations prompting us to doubt if we really know what is actually going on with our finances.
It is not enough to focus only on where the money went, important as that undoubtedly is. We should start by sorting out how much is actually being collected and what the regulations are concerning the distribution. If you can count but have no idea whose money it is that won’t help much.
Having establish that, we may then have to revisit the issue of whether there should be one accountant general or two. As things stand, the Accountant General of the Federation is in reality only the Accountant General of the Federal Government. We may wish to ask our representatives in the National Assembly to leave the present one and change his/her nomenclature to that (Accountant General of the Federal government) and create another one for the Federation Account, who can then truly be an Accountant General of the Federation. So long as the Federal Government collects the revenue and determines how much to disclose to the states and local governments, we shall continue to have problems because of conflict of interests.
And while all this palaver is brewing, we would be justified in asking where the Auditor General of the Federation is. Without proper audit, and without reporting directly to the National Assembly, all we get are committees of the House and Senate occasionally picking holes in government accounts. We do not even have the equivalent of the US Congressional Budget Office, despite allocations made yearly for it; and without dedicated professionals devoting their time to this, there is no chance in hell that our politicians will ever get beyond inviting officials to occasionally explain discrepancies and shortfalls.
Finally, we must address ourselves to the meaning of the word “budget”. Thus far, and it did not start with President Goodluck Jonathan, the Federal Government has treated all our budgets as huge jokes. They go through the motion but ignore the binding provisions and do exactly as they wish. Budgets are “Appropriation Acts” and thus are laws, not mere suggestions. That a ministry or an agency of government would admit to spending over $3.5 billion on kerosene “subsidy” without appropriation is a very serious matter. If what was budgeted for ‘subsidy” is not enough, the proper thing that should be done is to go back to the National Assembly for supplementary appropriation, and not to take it on themselves to keep on spending on the item. The minimum we expect is that the supervising ministers (Petroleum and Finance) be removed. All we got from the presidential press show is the assurance that kerosene subsidy continues.  But a crime had been committed, even if there is now a new directive legalising it retroactively.
In any case, if we cannot fix the refineries or build new ones, should we not, in the spirit of deregulation, allow people to freely import kerosene and sell? Or is the “subsidy” racket, just like governance, too lucrative to allow alternative policy options?
If we cannot produce more, can’t we at least monitor what we have and spend that appropriately? Can’t we learn to count and account?