Wanted: A dumb rubber stamp N/Assembly?

Even with its belated passage and equally delayed assent by acting President Yemi Osinbajo last Monday, there are indications that the 2017 Budget may be in for under-performance, and thereby deny Nigerians the full complement of options, for escaping from the ongoing recession. In the wake of his assent to the budget in the Presidential […]

Even with its belated passage and equally delayed assent by acting President Yemi Osinbajo last Monday, there are indications that the 2017 Budget may be in for under-performance, and thereby deny Nigerians the full complement of options, for escaping from the ongoing recession. In the wake of his assent to the budget in the Presidential Villa last Monday, Osinbajo expressed his reservations over aspects of the document and reportedly went on to advocate that the National Assembly has no powers to add new projects nor amend whatever was presented to it by the Executive. By his contention, he may not only have aided the cause of the ranks of unrepentant parliament-bashers of the country, by joining in their clamour to diminish the National Assembly, just as the various state Houses of Assembly have been rendered prostrate by their respective governors. 

He may also have opened up a new round of the wasteful debate over a matter that enjoys Constitutional clarification, but is routinely misread by apologists of the Executive arm, to justify the perennial failure for implementing the country’s budget, beyond pedestrian levels. 

It is for good measure that the unfortunate statement by the Acting President has attracted corrective responses from several Nigerians, including the President of the Senate Bukola Saraki who advised against such misinterpretation of the provisions of the Constitution. This is just as the Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara also described the position of the Acting President as untenable in the context of the Constitution. 

Other well disposed persons from different walks of life have also lent their weight in upholding the prerogative of the legislature to be endowed with omnibus powers over the country’s’ purse. This column is therefore inclined to identify with Saraki’s contention when he granted the Acting President the benefit of doubt that the latter may have been quoted out of context. 

Saraki ostensibly was relying on Osinbajo’s antecedents as an erudite professor of law, who would not ordinarily endorse a tacit denigration of the legislature, as his recent advocacy intends. Put succinctly, it seems doubtful that Osinbajo by subterfuge, was calling for a dumb rubber-stamp legislature.

Since the return of democracy in 1999, with the advent of the Olusegun Obasanjo administration, available evidence proves that the Presidency as the arrow head of the Executive arm, has deployed more resources to fighting with the National Assembly over the powers of the latter with respect to the national budget and other matters, than the actual challenge of implementing whatever provisions of any budget. Even with the express intention, spirit and wordings of Section 80 of Nigeria’s Constitution, which specify that the Executive shall lay before the National Assembly the financial estimates of any designated year, in a preceding year for approval by the latter, the Executive arm has demonstrated serial reluctance to allow such a dispensation to stand. Meanwhile the intended approval by the legislature is a commitment that the body agrees totally with whatever is presented by the Executive. 

By that provision of the Constitution, the Executive transfers whatever control it has over the budget to the legislature at the point of presentation, with the latter becoming thenceforth the real authority over the purse. This dispensation is informed by at least two premises. Firstly is the fact that as the real democratically elected representatives of the people, the legislators have the proper mandate to identify and pursue the good of their constituents within the context of the budget.  Secondly is the fact that in scrutinising the budget the legislators routinely collaborate with the various agencies of the Executive on a case by case basis, at the several budget hearing sessions at which the agencies actually defend their respective budgets. 

In the light of the foregoing therefore the budget is actually a product of the joint enterprise of the Legislature the Executive branch which is represented by the real-time schedule officers. It therefore constitutes a travesty of sorts for the Presidency to turn around after the passage of the budget to cast aspersions on the Legislature for whatever sins that are perceived in the budget. This is also why the reluctance of the Executive to implement the budget as passed and assented to, constitutes a patent illegality, as the dispensation is far less an affront to the Legislature than it is a disservice to the entire country. 

Admittedly, several theories have been advanced to explain the aberration in governance whereby public officers relegate extant rules to the background and elect to be guided by their personal whims and caprices in the conduct of government business. For some analysts, the long period of military rule, in the country and its culture of regimentation had imposed a hangover effect which denigrates the time honoured ethos that the public service should be driven by what is justified by the ordinary interpretation of the good of the wider public. For some others the rapid expansion of the public service without commensurate skill endowment of the cross section of the occupants of government offices is responsible. 

Yet in whatever form the picture is presented it cannot mask the reality that there is an unmistakeable link between the syndrome of poor service delivery by government and the present state of nationwide angst over the failure of government to do the needful for the citizenry. That is why the 2017 budget offers a special challenge to the administration under the leadership of Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, at least for now that the incumbent Muhammadu Buhari is out of town. The challenges facing the country with respect to the economic, security and sundry sectors of national life are humongous and therefore dwarf any distraction like the debate over a settled issue such as the legislature’s power over the national budget.

Interestingly the government has reportedly slated an undisclosed date in October 2017, as when it will present the 2018 budget estimates to the National Assembly. However, if the 2017 budget whose estimates were presented late to the National Assembly in December 2016 was passed after five months journey in May 2017, it stands to be seen how the 2018 budget will fare better with the present state of affairs in the nation’s public service.