On Akwa Ibom’s supplementary budget of controversy

In the last couple of weeks, the discursive space in Akwa Ibom State and beyond has been dominated by a raging debate on the state’s 2017 Supplementary Budget which was passed into law recently. Perhaps never since the return of democracy in 1999 has a fiscal governance issue raised as much dust in the state as this supplementary budget has done.

I can say without equivocation that the dust is a good thing, even if I have to add quickly that it has been a cacophony of the sensible, the not-so-sensible and the downright wacky! But that is democracy for you. By its very definition, democracy thrives on debate and contestation. Democratic narratives are validated by how well they accommodate the vulnerable and the voiceless, and they are strengthened by dissent as well as mainstream tolerance for marginal views. There is value even in the seemingly wackiest view.

I think that public debate is the highest form of democracy. But it seems to me that we have lost the facility for real and meaningful debates in this country. Almost every discourse is wont to be polarized along partisan or ethno-religious lines. The situation is really terrible in Akwa Ibom State, where intolerance for dissent has recently assumed a new high, equating religious fervor in its intensity. Fact is, not everyone who says “I no go gree” is actually an agent of the opposition party. Most are just being citizens, and the “Office of the Citizen” so happens to be the highest office in the land; which is why the dissenting voices around the Akwa Ibom State 2017 supplementary budget deserve to be listened to.

So we could say that the current outrage against certain items in the budget is an indication that citizens in the state are becoming aware that their voices matter in governance and development. Will their voices be taken into consideration? That is another matter altogether!

Now, let’s look at the supplementary budget itself. The point needs to be made that in presenting these further appropriations to the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly and in approving them, the Governor and the House are doing the job that citizens asked them to do. Next to the constitution, the budget is the most important document for government decision making. Without budgets, the promises of political leaders cannot be translated into social goods and services that address the needs of citizens. The budget therefore attaches cost implications to government plans and programmes and given that it is a law, empowers the government to raise revenues and spend accordingly. So we must first grant that developing fiscal plans and supplementing them as the need arises is standard government function and that both arms of government acted within their statutory role.

That point made, for Policy Alert as an organization working in the fiscal governance space, our concern is whether that role was discharged in accordance with good democratic practices such as transparency, accountability and citizen participation. Our answer is no.

Neither the Executive nor the House of Assembly found it necessary to publish the supplementary appropriation bill online or to open up the proposals to citizens’ inputs. This government is no stranger to the business of budget transparency and citizens’ participation. Recall that only recently, this same administration was celebrated for putting its 2017 budget online. Also note that the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly has had a tradition of not just holding budget hearings but also reflecting citizens’ inputs into the appropriation law. Coming from the same government, the departure of the recent supplementary budget process from these standards is indeed a new low in the state’s fiscal governance indicators.

The point has been made that the supplementary appropriation for the controversial Lagos Lodge is 700 million and not over N9 billion as widely speculated. My take is that the speculations would not have arisen in the first place if the numbers had been out there in the public domain. So it was the opacity of the process that opened it up to bad mouthing. Rumour only thrives in the absence of authoritative information, otherwise called facts. As they say, nature abhors a vacuum. So who are we to blame that in the absence of hard facts, bad data carried the day?

Now, do we really need a supplementary budget? That is the difficult one. Yes, there is a huge debate on the rationale for an additional N114.5 billion appropriation considering the fiscal challenges that the recession and the drop in statutory oil-derived receipts has brought upon the states, Akwa Ibom inclusive. With this supplementary appropriation, Akwa Ibom’s revised appropriation has spiked to N486 billion, making the state’s budget size second only to that of Lagos State (with N813 billion). Beyond absolute terms, at N89,174, Akwa Ibom’s per capita budget now beats that of Lagos State (N38,714) going by the projected population of both states which stood respectively at 5.45 million and 21.5 million in 2016. Add to this the fact that between 2008 and the present, the state has chalked N736 billion as supplementary appropriations alone! So it’s easy to argue that the supplementary budget is unnecessary on grounds of budget size and long-term supplementation trends during the last decade.

Even then, I want to resist the urge to support those who have tarred everything about the budget with the same brush. This is because, like other citizens of the state, I do not have access to budget implementation reports (BIRs) for the first and second quarters of 2017, to know how well or otherwise the 2017 budget has performed so far. So there is really no empirical way of determining and making a strong argument for or against supplementation.

Are there anything good things about the supplementary budget? Of course there must be! We have heard (note: only heard, not seen) that there is an augmentation for the agricultural sector budget to the tune of 10 billion. This is good news, considering that some of us had earlier expressed reservations on the original 2017 appropriation for agriculture which was reduced by as much 35 percent compared to the 2016 budget.

I’m sure there are other valid investments that this government has used the supplementary budget to address. But in money business, anecdotal evidence doesn’t count. Having the detailed supplementary budget, the Auditor General’s reports for 2015 and 2016, and the BIRs for Q1 and Q2 2017 would have helped this argument better. Right now, we’re just arguing blindly!

The Akwa Ibom case becomes more disappointing considering that this is happening at a time when the central government is actually demonstrating leadership on fiscal transparency issues, and state governments are expected to become more ambitious in their fiscal governance reforms in line with Nigeria’s commitments under the Open Government Partnership (OGP). Akwa Ibom State needs to get back in line; and quickly too!

 

Tijah Bolton-Akpan