Nigeria Swings 2016 Budget in Deceit

The fact remains that our president Muhamed Buhari could be making honest efforts in reviving our already bastardized country, regrettably he is surrounded with corrupt , inept aides, and saboteurs, waging war against the already complex situations in God Beloved Country, Nigeria. For the third time, the re-worked 2016 Budget was reported to have been returned to the NASS, with some picked holes in the budget.

The budget was allegedly sent to the President at about 1:15am, May 3, 2016, and was returned to the NASS at about Noon, May 3, 2016. The time is ripe for Buhari to possibly change his euphonious jingle about Nigeria public servants labeling the Ministers as 'Noise Makers', and make real change Nigerians yearned in the Nigeria public service.

It is terribly embarrassing when the Budget presented by the President was not the one debated by the NASS. The exercise is teaching Nigerian Youths an easy way to duplicitous practices, scandalously endorsed by the Nigerian Lawmakers. Nigerians could not wait to watch the results of the challenges manufactured by Nigerian legislature, colluding with bad eggs of the community, refusing the ship of Nigeria progress to move. The strange 'budget padding' shows that some NASS members are born crosiers, born into the world of indignity by unremorseful generation. It is about time Nigerians identify the dead rats in the hunter's den, across the country, especially with the multibillion naira phony subheads smuggled into the 2016 budget by the dishonorable NASS, as Martin Luther King Jr. rightly stated, "our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Nigerians are more interested in transforming the rhetoric of 'the later saints' politicians, into positive outcomes.

The scandalous quantified financial plan for the 2016 accounting period, is another dirty route of the dirty players enriching themselves. Typically Budget supposed to be a fiscal policy, a summary, or plan of the intended revenues and expenditures to address some teething issues affecting Nigeria, not the individuals. The budget should address the three areas of operating or current, the capital or investment, and the cash or cash flow. It is imperative for the continuous capacity building of the Nigerian legislature, in good budgeting, budget process, budget analysis and budget monitoring, tracking and evaluation.

The NASS was alleged to have secretly mutilated Nigeria's budget by removing the Lagos-Calabar N60 billion coastal railway, the cut off of N8.7 billion from the Idu-Kaduna rail-line. Unfortunately the funds for completion of all major road projects in the country were slashed. While the new roads for which studies have not even been conducted, were included. Like the Ilorin-Jebba Road rehabilitation, awarded to Emir of Ilorin, who refused to work on the road until he got the marching order from Buhari for the Emir to travel through the road to Abuja, so as to experience the 'smoothness' of the Ilorin-Jebba Road, which was experienced by Fashola while he went to inspect Kainji-Dam. That would allow the adjoining roads like Tsaragi-Tsonga road, to be rehabilitated.

Buhari, a retired Nigerian Military General, from Daura, Katsina State, after his opportunity to correct the mischiefs of the society, cut short by his greedy junior officers; struggled for 12 years to have the opportunity to correct Nigeria challenges. The opportunity came through the coalition with Jagaban of Borgu, Tinubu, who at a campaign rally in Kano on Sunday, March 20, 2011, as reported on page 6, of Vanguard, Monday, March 21, 2011, politically once inquired that "... We certainly don't need expired leadership"; while Fashola, reported in Tribune, Thursday, January 15, 2010 referenced Buhari in few words, "When I took office, I was 44; then I could count the white hair on my head; now I am 51, I am now {2010} counting the black hair on my head. Don't put old people there ooo. If you put old people there they will sleep there they will sleep ooo, and they will not be able to work"; and El-Rufai in The Sun Newspaper, Thursday, September 30, 2010; "I was 25years old when Buhari was Head of State and now I am 50+ and he still wants to be President. I don't understand that…I don't understand that at all. I call on all young people of Nigeria to take their future into their hands, and ensure that they vote for a new generation of leaders". Is Buhari capable of handling the issues affecting Nigeria or the 'bricklayers' around him are working against his level of capability?

With the challenges stirring at Buhari's face, especially the crippled NASS, which had been captioned as the incubator of corruption during Obasanjo's elongated Ghana Must Go of IBB creation. The NASS has cleverly resolved to the 'padding' of the budget hiding its exploitation activities left for the 'New Sheriff' in town to clean.

Regardless how long it is going to take, to clean up the NASS, Buhari administration should continue getting details of the 'paddled' 2016 budget. Believing that it would not get to the joint session of the Senate and House, with two thirds, to override the President's veto of not signing the budget, turning into a battle between the Legislature and the Executive. It has been in history that more active legislative involvement may increase frictions with the executive branch, as the 2016 Nigeria budget currently experiencing.

Nigerians should continue to take the heat of high temperature of the indulgency of the of the budget 'paddlers' at the NASS. Buhari may go to the Consolidation Account, or Foreign Reserves to borrow, not from China, until the 2016 Budget is approved.

NASS, like other legislative bodies across the world, has power to amend and repeal public policy, observe and steer governing actions with the undisputable statutory right to amend the budget or budgets, involved in the process. In its constitution responsibilities, it is supposed to exercise control over government finances by approving the budget, all foreign loans contracted by the government, hold hearings, if it needs to investigate how the executive branch is performing; thus ensuring that the executive branch is doing its job. It has the legal right to scrutinize the budget before the President's signature for execution, not changing the goalpost to the direction of football, as the traitorous, treacherous, supposedly-trusted elected NASS members, attempted to amend the CCT and CCB Act to suit their tastes.

The Nigerian Legislature is a key institution in government accountability, especially in the budget process with its ability to engage with the executive branch on the development and monitoring of government budgets and the implementation of those budgets, as part of its responsibility for the oversight of the executive branch. Legislative oversight supposed to be a fundamental checks and balances as extended to the Budget. NASS is responsible to levy taxes, in addition to making laws, assigning the new laws as well as amending and repealing the old laws. Ironically most of them invade payment of taxes by hiding their monies in Panama. In case of human error, an oversight in the budget should be addressed between the executive and the legislature. The executive has no autonomous power over budget matters, without the full consideration of Nigeria social challenges, the Lawmakers; before the student of 'never taken bribe' school, would be mentally careless of his responsibility as a Minister in building rail line on its first trip into another 'no bribery taken' project, in his public service? Whereas the N60 billion meant for the Calabar-Lagos rail budget was not in the original budget.

On the other hand the executive has the right to scrutinize what the NASS proposed for him to execute for the fiscal year before signing it to law, to safeguard Buhari's neck from the abattoir of the legislature, as if the lawmakers are the most pious obedient servants.

President Muhammadu Buhari, 

Some projects were purportedly inserted without the knowledge of others either in the appropriation or relevant sectoral committees and presenting same as the collective decision of the house or the entire legislature. If and when the Legislators allegedly removed some national projects and replaced such with 'personal' items with no value to an average Nigerian, possibly unknown to the Senate President and Speaker of the House, then there is a premeditated problem. It is a national disgrace that majority of the 109 senators and the 360 members of the House of Representatives had no knowledge of the details of the 2016 budget before they passed the document on March 23. What are their responsibilities, if they could not get the details of the appropriations presented, debated and passed as the National Budget?

It was alleged that about 386 'strange' projects, worth N12.6billion, were allegedly inserted by the NASS into Agriculture Ministry's proposals, with about three projects unconnected with the agriculture sector. Part of the alleged incision were the provision of 58 boreholes for 29 rural communities and an additional 50 for 50 of mysterious rural communities in the sum of N175 million and N150.4 million. It is absurd for the NASS Appropriation Committees to alter votes without recourse to Standing Committees, who submit proposals to them. Who could be trusted in the wave of changes Nigerians yearn for, when an average Legislature mindset is to swindle the system.

Some other obvious contraventions in the budget included the fraudulent N4 billion removed from Ministry of Health and added to Code of Conduct Tribunal; the cost of 80 illegal roads without designs added to Works budget, 30 of them not Federal; Money meant for Works, power transmission, diverted by lawmakers for tricycles, town halls, boreholes in their constituencies; 73 illegal projects added to Education budget - no designs available for the projects, and no tenders conducted; Lawmakers slashed money for poor students by 50% in Education budget and added same to their states constituencies.

Specifically it was also alleged that Rep Abdulmumin Jibrin, Kiru/Bebeji Federal Constituency, Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, allocated N4.169 billion projects to his constituency in the budget: N100m for Town Hall, Construction of roads in Kiru/Bebeji-N150m, Solar street lights-N300m; Badaf Road Construction-N405m; Pedestrian Bridges -N200m; Bebeji Earth Dam-N270m; Empowerment items-N100m; Entrepreneurship Development Training and Vocational Centre -N100m; Rehabilitation of Gwarzo Kiru, Kwanar Maiyaki-N180m; Rehabilitation of Sharada-Kwanar Dogara-N1.445billion; Construction of solar powered boreholes-N150m; Supply of tricycles, grinding machines and set of women salon empowerment kits-N200m; Small irrigation scheme ins in Kiru-N100m.

When confronted, Jibrin would defensively confirmed the allocations, which like some of his colleagues queried,"Just because I'm the chairman of the appropriation committee, my constituents should not get projects? Are my constituents not Nigerians? Every member has one project or the other in his constituency, so I don't think I did anything wrong by having some projects in my constituency. I think people should be fair to me please." Such allocation of projects could be all right in a decent Legislative Body, when all the constituencies are fairly allocated the country's resources, not at the expense of other Nigerians without any opportunity to produce the Chair of the Committees? Hence the justification for the physical combats on the floor of both Chambers, and in some State Houses of Assembly, Nasarawa and Edo of recent, (April/May 2016), including women, for positions, which they naively concluded to be the best way to get projects into their communities.

The removal of the N60bn Lagos-Calabar rail project for transporting heavy goods, decongesting Nigerian roads, which have become death traps, blew the NASS covers. Incidentally the sum of 54 billion Naira that was discovered by the Senate Committee on Land Transport to be floating in the budget of the Ministry of Transportation, as presented by the Executive, was injected into augmenting the funds needed for counterpart funding of both projects (Lagos to Kano and Lagos to Calabar Rail modernization), as at the time the committee defended its report before the senate committee on Appropriation. It was believed that the Senate Appropriation Committee surreptitiously inserted 80 road and miscellaneous constituency projects worth N40 billion in order to kill the N60 billion Lagos-Calabar rail project rolled to 'business-as-usual' method that has brought Nigeria to its present impasse.

According to Howard Zinn, "…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and… while the grand thieves, are running the country. That is our problem". Possibly Nigerian politicians should serve two terms in the elected offices; one term in the office and the other term in prison.

Regardless the efforts to enhance the capacity of the legislators since 1999, ensuring that the significant numbers of them, with a robust legislative experience are returned, unfortunately, they have not achieved the desired results and the gaps relapse with low competency in the budget process, with each new session, especially the current 2016 session. Unfortunately the Legislators camouflage with the oversight functions to engage in corrupt practices. Possibly a focus must be directed on improving the Legislative Budget Office.

As a matter of fact there is the immediate need to adjust the recurrent, capital ratio to the minimum acceptable level, and should be participatory enough to guarantee transparency and accountability. The tension between legislative authority and prudent fiscal policy, exploring strategies for reconciliation, could be minimized.

In addition, Buhari administration must address the state of the current economic policies, with better infrastructure, while fighting corruption in all facets of Nigerian public life. None of these looters would want to change their exotic life style, while continuing squeezing water out of dry rag.

Buhari should stay more at home to govern and manage Nigerian resources. The trips should be left with the Foreign Affairs Minister if he trusts him. Otherwise, he should let him go and add Foreign Affairs Ministry to his portfolio, as well as Oil Minister. What is on the ground in the country today (May 2016) requires his 24/7 attendance. He should deal with the individuals with the password for graduating Nigeria from rot to decay status, across board, turning Nigeria into the country of beggars, nonetheless, its natural and human resources.