By Lawrence Olaoye
Since the inception of the Fourth Republic, public outcry has always followed the expenditure profile of the legislators in the National Assembly, beginning with the ‘outlandish’ furniture allowance approved for the lawmakers in 1999. Since then, the first arm of government has been opened up to public scrutiny and most often than not, public consternation.
This is due partly to the fact that the legislature, being the singular arm of government consisting of the representatives of the people across the divides in the country, has always been in the eye of the storm from the public outrage against waste and public profligacy. But no parliament has ever preoccupied itself with the responsibility of researching into the expenditure profile of the executive like the current Seventh Assembly.
Although the role of purposeful oversight over the executive started from the Sixth Assembly in the House of Representatives under the leadership of Speaker Dimeji Bankole which brought the issue of ‘Unspent Funds’ into the nation’s fiscal lexicon, the successive Assembly led by Speaker Aminu Tambuwal went ahead to frontally bring to the fore the need to cut down the cost of governance commonly referred to as the Overhead Cost.
In order to prime itself for the task of reducing the cost of governance, the Tambuwal’s leadership, in line with the popular maxim ‘example is better than precept’ cut down its overhead by about 60 percent.
A cursory look at the budget defense exercise in the last few weeks suggested that there existed some sharp practices in the corridors of power in the country. While the capital expenditures kept shrinking, the overhead budget kept bulging. Similarly, while the executive would find it convenient not to release funds for capital budgets on the ground of paucity of funds, overhead budget or what is generally called running cost, is being funded 100 percent.
Obviously, because of the penchant of the executive for not executing the capital budget, especially since the introduction of constituencies’ projects, government ministries, departments and agencies have devised a means of beating the development by stuffing their overhead budgets with projects that could ordinarily pass for capital budget. But, the parliament in the course of vetting the 2012 appropriation proposal has been able to discover this fiscal ‘innovation’ and has consistently kicked against the practice.
Apart from overloading the overhead with a view to getting slush funds approved by the lawmakers, the parliament has equally been able to discover series of extra-budgetary expenditures by the MDAs. Certain ministries have been queried in the course of the ongoing budget defense for spending Internally Generated Revenues (IGR) without recourse to the National Assembly. Others have been reprimanded for moving funds from a subhead in the budget to another without passing through the due process by applying for parliamentary virement.
A special case in this issue of extra-budgetary expenditure is the extra funds used to finance the subsidy without legislative approval. While the executive proposed the sum of N350 billion as subsidy for petroleum products imported into the country in the 2011 fiscal year, the government ended up spending close to N2 trillion without the approval of the parliament. Although investigations into the fuel subsidy scam is still ongoing in the House, several mouth-gaping revelations coming out of the probe are indicative of the way the nation’s resources are being administered without recourse to the legislators who have the constitutional powers over the nation’s purse.
Again, the House has been able to point out areas of neglect in the nation’s revenue allocations template. While certain ministries and parastatals have the luxury of profligacy by virtue of obvious over budgeting, several others with key hold on the nation’s development are being starved of funds. For instance, in spite of the government slogan of vision 20:2020 with the dream of creating employment and enabling environment for prospective investors in the country, budgetary allocations to sectors like the Science and Technology, Youth Development, Health, Power are meagre when compared to those allocated to Security and Foreign Affairs.
Although, some of the committees in the House have been accused of loading the budget with a view to benefitting from the projects infused into the document, there are indications however that most often than not, injecting certain projects into the budget is to ensure rapid and even development across the country.
As the budget defense continues, people are waiting with bathed breath for the outcome of the process that may plug some perceived loopholes for executive manipulations and thereby bring to a tolerable level the spate of official corruption in the country.
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