2016 Budget: Stand-off between the Executive and National Assembly

There seems to be a festering stand-off between the Executive and the Legislature, as President Muhammadu Buhari has reportedly withheld his assent to the 2016 appropriation bill sent to him by the National Assembly on the grounds that the budget provisions/appropriations had been mutilated, modulated, altered and tampered with by the assembly and some key projects expunged or reviewed downwards. Some highlights of the projects and programmes whose provisions were allegedly tampered with by the National Assembly included the Lagos-Calabar N60 billion coastal railway which was removed, Idu-Kaduna rail line cut by N 8.7 billion, major federal roads slashed, polio eradication and essential drugs for HIV/AIDS expunged, agric/water resources reallocated to constituency projects. For this reason some people have been castigating the National Assembly as “anti-people” while others are calling for mob action/ mass protests to “occupy’ the national assembly. There appears to be an ongoing smear campaign on the National Assembly, particularly the Senate, all because of the ‘bad boy’, Saraki. The last time I checked, Nigeria’s National assembly consists of both the Senate and the House of representatives. Hence the alleged alteration of the budget provisions by the national assembly could not have been the sole prerogative of the Senate, without the concurrence of the House of Representatives. But curiously and interestingly, while the Saraki-led Senate has been receiving a lot of bashing and criticisms, the Dogara-led House of Representatives seems to be absolved, insulated and isolated in this whole budget imbroglio! Albeit, for one reason or another, some people (depending on the side of the divide one belongs) may not like the leadership of the National Assembly, particularly the Senate (owing to the Saraki factor) as presently constituted, we should not be oblivious of the fact that the National Assembly has a constitutional responsibility, as per its oversight function, to consider, review, modulate, amend, accept or turn down the budget proposals or part thereof as presented by the executive. However the assembly has a corresponding duty to give justifiable reasons and plausible explanations for doing so and ought to inform and convey same to the executive accordingly.

We may not immediately know why some of the budget provisions were reviewed downwards or out rightly rejected until we get to know the reasons espoused by the assembly. Some of the reasons might be due to project duplications or failure to give convincing reasons for embarking on such projects at this point in time and the positive impact or value addition such projects will have on the masses in the near time. The assembly may even look at some of the projects as not been of immediate priority in this fiscal year based on cost-benefit ratio analysis vis-a-vis the scarce, dwindling resources available to the government. There may be other reasons which may be unknown to many but which ought to have been conveyed to the Executive. I personally have my reservations on the need, timing, value addition and priority of one or two projects that were rejected or reviewed downwards by the assembly. That said, I think it behoves on the national assembly to throw more light on the reasons for the modulation of the appropriation in order to have a balanced and an informed public discourse on the matter.

We don’t need to castigate the national assembly as anti-people each time they have one or two disagreements with the executive. Most people tend to erroneously equate the status and voice of Saraki, being the senate president and the alter ego of the senate, as the ipso facto voice and de facto position of the entire national assembly, including the House of representatives, as if whatever Saraki says is yes and amen and whatever he wants is automatically binding on the assembly, thereby turning the national assembly, with seasoned politicians, technocrats and professionals, into a mere puppet and rubber stamp in the hands of one man, Saraki! By so doing, wittingly or unwittingly, such people are ascribing to Saraki a larger than life position which he is not. I think we should refrain from personalising our national institutions all in the name of politics.

Going forward, my take is as follows;

• Let the National Assembly convey the reasons for the modulation of the appropriation to the Executive, if they have not already done so.

• Let both arms of government sit down and reason together at the round table to iron out and resolve the areas of differences and harmonise their positions in the overall interests of the Country. They should sheath their swords, bury the hatchets and shun all forms of political intrigues, bickering and horse trading in the interests of millions of suffering Nigerian masses. They should realise that both arms of government are supposedly working in the interests of the people. Both arms are to supplement and not to supplant one another. The executive arm is working for the people, just as the legislative arm is also representing the interests of the people. So both arms of government ordinarily and constitutionally have a common goal and collective objective of serving, protecting and promoting the interests of the Nigerian people.

KAYODE OLUWA