Budget defense at the National Assembly are meant to be a time for scrutiny, accountability, and transparency. After all, it is a crucial process that determines how public funds that affect all Nigerians will be spent. However, a number of budget defense sessions with Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) which started openly, were concluded behind closed doors.
This raises eyebrows about what could be happening away from public view. Are lawmakers truly shaping a budget for national development, or is something else at play behind those locked doors?
Such secrecy is particularly troubling owing to the fact that lawmakers are often accused of inserting extra figures which inflate the budgets of MDAs amounting to trillions of Naira for selfish gains.
While it may be justified that security-related MDAs operate with a level of confidentiality due to the nature of their mandate, the same can’t be said for other government agencies. Closed-door sessions with non-sensitive sectors have sparked concerns about possible budget padding and questionable project insertions.
One of such instances occurred during the House Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream) budget defense with the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI).
Alhassan Ado-Doguwa, chairman of the Committee closed the session, but immediately announced that the budget defense will be finalised at another venue, where journalists were not invited.
“The legislature will have no option than to support you and provide you with the enabling financial environment for you to discharge your duties and mandate. Let us go to 022, let the officials go there now,” he concluded.
Soon after his comment, the NEITI CEO and lawmakers left. The chairman of Committee then urged journalists to leave and return later.
A similar scenario played out when the Minister of Communications, Bosun Tijani, appeared before the Joint Committee on Communications, Digital Economy, and Cybersecurity. The session was already packed, but just before it was open for questions, Shuaib Afolabi Salisu, Senate Committee Chairman, wrapped up things quickly, and directed that only the minister and a few members of his delegation should remain while others leave, especially journalists.
“The gentlemen of the press and other persons should leave. You (journalists) have heard it, the ministry needs more funding, N6bn cannot do anything for a sector that contributes to the GDP of the country; so, the message we want you to take out is that the sector needs more money and we are committed to ensuring adequate funding,” he said.
As the doors shut and journalists and other attendees made their way out, a man quipped, “the lawmakers want to negotiate their cut.”
It’s not clear if he was in the Minister’s delegation or works with the committee or just a public spectator, but his comment elicited mild laughter among those around.
However, the underlying concern was not lost; lawmakers have been said to often insert projects outside the mandates of MDAs’ budgets.
In the 2024 budget, lawmakers inserted a total of 7,447 projects culminating into a whopping ₦2.24 trillion. This was disclosed by BudgIT, a civic-tech non-profit organisation.
For Nigerians, the question remains: If the budget discussions truly serve the public interest, why the locked doors? Closed-door sessions will continue to fuel speculation that budget talks are not in public interest.
A recent investigative report revealed that lawmakers demanded N8 million each from tertiary institutions to approve their allocations in the 2025 budget.
Unsurprisingly, the meeting where lawmakers in Senate Committee on Tertiary Education and TETFund and the House Committee on University Education were said to have sought bribe from the institutions held behind-closed doors.
The National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS) have said that transparency and public participation is critical in legislative procedures, thus, budget activities must be done openly.
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