Osinbajo’s diplomacy on the budget and agitations

Theodore Roosevelt, America’s 26th President, once said “speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” This was enacted last week as Acting President Yemi Osinbajo asserted himself on the recent divisive call by some rabble-rousers in Kaduna that Igbos should leave the north in three months and subsequent national outrage, especially from groups in the southeast.

AgP Osinbajo held a series of meetings that, hopefully, will calm the two agitating regions and bring things back down to normal. Recently,

many have called for the balkanisation of the country which I do not consent to and strongly disagree with. President Muhammadu Buhari has also reiterated in very firm words that there will never be an alternative to a united Nigeria.

The three months ultimatum was issued by some so-called coalition of Northern groups including the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, claiming Igbos will be forced out at the expiration of theOctober 1 deadline if they didn’t leave. The ultimatum followed a successful sit-at-home order by the Nnamdi Kanu-led Indigenous People of Biafra,

IPOB, on May 30, in the five southeastern states.

On Tuesday, Osinbajo held the first meeting with northern leaders and told them to stop hiding behind ethnic or religious lines and caution youths in their region to desist from sounding the drumbeats of war.

“We are determined to ensure the unity of the country along the lines of our constitution and I want to say that hate and divisive speech or divisive behaviour where it is illegal will be met with the full force of the law.

“And I want to ensure that there is no doubt at all that it is the resolve of the government that none will be allowed to get away with making speeches that can cause sedition or that can cause violence,” he said.

Again, it was German dictator Adolph Hitler that said: “When diplomacy ends, war begins.”

Osinbajo’s approach of bringing agitators to the table may hopefully pay off as it did with the Niger Delta militants. It is always better off for warring parties to come to the table and talk about the object of their agitation before there is a breakdown, or don’t you agree?

The Acting President did the same thing with the leaders from the South East who turned out in a larger number than those from the North. Besides reading out the same diplomatic riot act of ‘we love you and will not hesitate to whip you into line if you try to break the ranks’ he asked their leaders to back their displeasure with a strong voice.

They must also warn their youth (obviously speaking about the IPOB and other groups) against hate speeches. At the end of the day, whether we fight or disagree, we must come back to the table and continue to live as one strong, united Nigeria.

Meanwhile, have you noticed how grey Osinbajo is becoming? The stress of running the country alone is telling on him. I will talk about it a bit next week.

Last week, we finally moved past a pressing issue, the budget. Despite all the battles that many thought were raging over the approved estimates by the National Assembly, the government turned a blind eye and let it go.

So a month after the National Assembly finally approved the spending plan which was presented before a joint session of the two chambers seven months earlier by President Buhari, AgP Osinbajo put pen to paper and signed it into an act. However, the drama and all that preceded this final signing is something to lend a thought to.

After the budget was laid in December, the Senate commenced processes two months after and finally tidied up three months later, not without a repeated story of the document missing and all of those tales I do not want to bore you with. When it arrived the Presidency, May 19th, our ears tingled waiting to hear if there were tales of padding but Osinbajo and his team, seemed to have brought in diplomacy into the whole matter.

Truthfully, when I heard that there were over 400 strange projects added to the budget, what first came to mind was the budget padding episode of last year and how President Buhari had immediately returned the document and publicly asserted he had never heard of a word padding till then. This time there was nothing like that, even if the executive prepared for a show down, we were almost between the devil and the deep blue sea, having gone six months into the year without a budget, the best way to handle this matter was to apply diplomacy.

After series of meetings between the two arms of government, no one mentioned the word padding, although ministers grumbled among themselves and I later realised how disappointed the Acting President was, though he didn’t give off any emotions. Shortly before assenting to the budget, Osinbajo said the delay was largely due to disagreements.

“This was largely due to disagreements we had about the changes introduced to our 2017 Budget proposals by the National Assembly…the changes fundamentally affected some of our priority programmes and would make implementation extremely difficult and in some cases impossible.

“In sum, the engagements yielded acceptable results The most important being that the leadership of the National Assembly has given us a commitment that the National Assembly will re-instate the budgetary allocations for all the important executive projects, such as the railway standard gauge projects, the Mambilla Power Project, the Second Niger Bridge, the Lagos – Ibadan Expressway etc. which they had reduced to fund some of the new projects they introduced”.

So, after an agreement was reached and he signed the budget, Mr. Osinbajo just had to let off some steam, of course he had to. Who would go completely quiet over such padding (let us call it what it is) anyway? Barely 24 hours after he signed the budget, the Budget and National Planning office commenced planning for the 2018 budget and there the Acting President saw an opportunity to calm the frayed nerves of his team who I think may have also wondered why he let the discrepancies slide. He told them he too was disappointed at the conduct of the National Assembly as they had no business introducing new projects into an executive bill.

According to him, when the executive presents an appropriation bill to the legislature they can amend figures or add to it but not to introduce entirely new projects into the bill.

“Do not introduce entirely new projects and all of that or modify projects. This is something that we experienced last year and again. It now leaves the question about who is supposed to do what,” Osinbajo said at a meeting that was not supposed to be open to the press. We just found our way there and later understood that the silence from the executives over those additions were not only unusual but diplomatic and I am assuming that the budget would also have been signed with the constituency projects that President Buhari had staunchly said he would not accept.

Before I lay the budget issue to rest, I must recall something that happened less than an hour to the signing ceremony. About three hours to the scheduled time for the signing reporters were already seated in the hall, no one wanted to miss an opportunity to watch the Acting President sign the budget after all the perceived power play.

A press statement was released saying that President “Buhari backs Osinbajo to sign the budget”. What did that even mean? It sent out all the wrong signals and got me thinking that really there was some power play that had prevented the signing of the budget earlier or that something was really cooking when the issue of who will sign the budget came up. Please don’t ask me what, just enjoy your day and have a great week ahead.

 

Elizabeth Archibong