Why budget padding has been a perennial crisis ( 2)

ON page 75 of my new book, earlier referenced, we documented an article focused on budget padding published on June 25, 2018, which is nearly six years ago. It is titled: ‘ Budget 2018: Stranger Than Fiction As Presidency Accuses NASS Of Usurpation.’ The piece which is still relevant to the unfolding embarassing scenario of today is basically an analysis of the fracas between the executive and legislative branches of government arising from budget padding back in 2018. The article underscores how things have changed in the governance space of our beloved country, yet nothing has really changed since the bad manners in governance identified as Budget Padding have remained, as if it is ingrained in the DNA of our unscrupulous public administrators in a manner that it is said that “a leopard cannot change its spots.” On that note and to put things in perspective, I would like to seek the indulgence of readers to allow me reproduce a snippet of the 2018 article earlier referenced: Here we go: Budget 2018: Stranger Than Fiction as Presidency Accuse NASS of Usurpation. “Incredibly, after Nigerians have waited with bated breath for an unprecedented seven months that seemed like eternity, President Muhammadu Buhari has, in the course of signing the 2018 appropriation bill into law on Wednesday, June 20, stated that the document he signed is radically different from what he submitted to the National Assembly, NASS. “According to Mr. President, in addition to the disruptive effect of the long delay in the passage of the appropriation bill on the economy, the National Assembly did not only cannibalise it, but the lawmakers practically engaged in a bazaar by increasing the allocation to themselves, and President Buhari is making heavy weather of it. Below is what he said at the signing ceremony: “The National Assembly made cuts amounting to 347 billion Naira in the allocations to 4,700 projects submitted to them for consideration and introduced 6,403 projects of their own amounting to 578 billion Naira”. The narrative above depicts a situation in 2018. Does it not seem like déjà vu that budget padding, a major point of contention between the executive and legislative arms, is recurring in 2024? Even with the clarifications recently provided by the Budget Planning Minister, Atiku Bagudu, in his press conference held last Thursday, stating that budget padding is not abnormal and that the responsibility for budget creation ultimately lies with legislators, many Nigerians are still perplexed by the ongoing dispute. Clearly, it’s the lingering animosity between the executive and legislative branches during the last regime that vilified budget padding, bringing it into the national spotlight in a very negative way. Prior to the 2018 budget debacle that earned senator Ningi a suspension from duty, there was a heated dispute in 2016 over the same issue, costing former House of Representatives member and former Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, Abdulmumuni Jibrin, his position after accusing House principal officers, including Speaker Yakubu Dogara, of attempting to pad the 2016 budget with 40 billion Naira for constituency projects. However, due to the political brinksmanship skills of President Bola Tinubu, the leaders of the other two arms of government— Godswill Akpabio and Kayode Ariwoola in the legislative and judicial branches respectively— are now working in harmony with him, unlike in 2018 when President Buhari and Senate President Saraki were in conflict with a Senate under Saraki’s firm control. Thanks to President Tinubu’s referenced political strategy, there has been no open confrontation. However, a schism has emerged within the NASS since the presidency did not challenge the NASS for reducing Government Owned Enterprises ( GOES) budget by N850 billion and allegedly padding its own budget by N1.2 trillion, bringing it to about N2.1 trillion. As mentioned earlier, such actions are not inherently wrong. It was Senator Agom Jarikre from Cross Rivers State who, in an outburst, exposed how the padded funds were distributed among senators, loudly complaining on the floor of the upper legislative chamber last Tuesday that he received none. Whether the distinguished senators merely received projects allocated to their senatorial zones equivalent to the amount revealed by Jarikre, or if they actually received or intend to receive the funds, remains to be clarified by the embarrassed members of the red chamber. My gut feeling was that it is the former rather than the latter that would apply. But former President Olusegun Obasanjo had in 2016 alleged that the legislators actually collect the funds and execute the proposed projects partially, while others do not implement at all. Has the situation changed? It now behooves the lawmakers to defend themselves by debunking the claim by Senator Ningi and reinforced by former President Obasanjo’s accusation. By and large, if Obasanjo’s allegation is correct, the foregoing developments are telltale signs of how Nigerian legislators are trying to usurp the role of the executives by not being content with making laws but also inclined towards being engaged directly in delivering dividends of democracy to their constituents, which going by the provisions in our current constitution, is the exclusive preserve of the executive arm of government at the federal, state, and local government levels. One worries that if the malaise of padding budget and lawmakers executing projects is not outlawed outright and those engaged in the crime sanctioned, as opposed to sweeping the crime under the carpet as has been done by previous administrations, the perfidy will be repeating itself again and again. Acquiescing with such an attitude or approach to leadership is contrary to the admonition by the iconoclastic civil rights leader Martin Luther King: “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward”. In the light of the alarm about budget padding raised by Ningi, how can our leaders move the nation forward if our lawmakers keep engaging in breaching the law? That is the N2.1 trillion question begging for an answer. Would our lawmakers allow themselves to be branded lawbreakers by a critical mass of Nigerians who cannot fathom the reason or see justification for the perennial budget padding crisis? It’s about time that both arms of government found a permanent solution to what seems to me like a sort of enduring dichotomy.