Budget Stalemate And National Woes

By Dan Amor

For all you may care to know, the 2016 Appro­priation Bill, like its pre­decessors, has continued to generate heat between the Ex­ecutive and the Legislature one month into the second quarter of the year. Some analysts have ascribed the feud between the Presidency and the National As­sembly over the 2016 Budget to the trial of the Senate President Dr. Bukola Saraki by the Code of Conduct Tribunal over the al­leged false declaration of assets by Saraki.

They believe that the Na­tional Assembly is trying to use the budget as a bargaining chip to cut a deal with the Presidency in order to give the Senate Presi­dent a soft-landing. And, as they say, when two elephants fight, the grass suffers, Nigerians are facing untold hardship as a result of the protracted delay in the passage of the budget. Yet, unnecessary Executive/Legislative conflicts have come to characterise the annual budget making process in the country and, to a large ex­tent, undermine the effectiveness of budgets in delivering to Nige­rians the so-called dividends of democracy. These conflicts have arisen in spite of the actual deline­ation of roles and responsibilities of the Executive vis-a-vis the Leg­islature particularly the extent of authority regarding variations to key assumptions incorporated in the Appropriation Bill by the Ex­ecutive that should be allowed the Legislature. In the particular case of the 2016 Appropriation Bill, the National Assembly went too far.

Section 4 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nige­ria 1999 (as amended) is unam­biguously clear about the role of the National Assembly and its responsibilities as the Podium of the elected representatives of the people. Also, Sections 80-83 publish the role of the Legislature with specific respect to the man­agement of the nation’s finances. Whereas, in exercising its over­sight functions, the Legislature is empowered by the Constitution to either add to or subtract from the allocation forwarded to it by the Executive, it can always do that in consultation with the lat­ter. The Constitution does not empower the National Assembly to create new clauses or remove in its entirety an item already budg­eted for by the Executive without the consent of the latter. The cur­rent unbridled legislative rascality being displayed by our lawmak­ers is nothing but the hangover of irascible corruption which was the stock-in-trade of previous leg­islatures since 1999.

No doubt, the received wisdom and the practice of the presidential system of de­mocracy indubitably accords the Legislature unfettered authority to vary any aspect of the budget proposal preferably in consulta­tion with the Executive, as noted above, as an integral part of the approval process. To ensure that the decision to alter the content of the Appropriation Bill prior to approval is not whimsical or driven by selfish considerations, it is recommended that exclusive and far-reaching consultations and collaboration between the Executive and Legislature should characterise the budget prepara­tion process.

But in the context of the pre­vailing situation, the Legislature is yet to establish a full-fledged, appropriately staffed Legislative Research and Budget Office and, to that extent, is handicapped by the lack of a robust basis upon which to perform its approval and oversight functions. In the United States of America from where we borrowed our Executive Presidential system, internation­ally celebrated economists and reputable experts such as Profes­sor John Kenneth Galbraith, are constantly hired by the Legislature to think for them and give them direction in the budgetary proce­dure.

It is therefore suggested that this power to vary budgetary pro­posals from the Executive should be exercised with a great deal of circumspection as the Execu­tive could be operating from the standpoint of a relatively superior understanding of the workings of the economy given the institu­tional capacity of its proposal. For instance, in 2004, while Nigerians were expecting words regarding the approval of the budget which President Olusegun Obasanjo presented to the joint sitting of the National Assembly on October 12, 2004, it filtered out that there was move to increase the bench­mark price of crude of 27 dollars used for the preparation of the budget and that the Executive had sent in a letter cautioning against such a move.