NANFeatures/Vol.12/No.10/2018 (Jan. 9)
Facilitating transparent budgeting
A News Analysis by Ikenna Uwadileke, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)
President Muhammadu Buhari submitted the 2018 national budget estimates of N8.6 trillion to the National Assembly on Nov. 7, 2017.
In his remark, he said the budget would consolidate on the achievements of previous budgets and deliver on Nigeria’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan from 2018 to 2020.
Unarguably, national budget is one of the important instruments for the development of a modern state through which government can allocate resources to deliver services to the people.
Economists even argue that a national budget provides a forecast of revenues and expenditures for the country and enables the actual financial operation of the country to be measured against the forecast.
According to them, a national budget is, therefore, a veritable tool for appraising performances of agencies or sectors of the economy.
However, financial analysts insist that although there is need to rely on the budget for an even and rapid economic growth of the states, there are lots of blockages to effective budgeting process in Nigeria.
According to them, the country’s budgetary process is largely non-participatory, where citizens and communities do not participate in formulating policies.
This observation, among others, might have informed the call for more engagement of citizens in the budgetary process among lawmakers before the passage of the budget.
Political experts, therefore, note that calling for more engagement of citizens in budgetary process is a good development because it is the role of the parliament to facilitate a transparent budget that will promote a robust economy.
They observe further that allegation of irregularities that characterised the 2016, 2017 and 2018 budgets, also nudge the lawmakers to call more participation in budgeting.
For instance, the House Committee on Appropriation accused the principal officers of the house of unlawfully allocating projects worth N60 billion to their constituencies in 2016.
Apart from this, the Senate expressed concerns over alleged inaccuracies in the 2018 budget submitted to the National Assembly by the executive arm.
The Senate said the budget document presented by Buhari to the joint session of the National Assembly contained a lot of inaccuracies and appeared to have been “padded’’.
In the same vein, the legislators berated the executive over alleged poor implementation of the 2017 budget.
But former Speaker of House of Representatives Ghali Na’Abba alleged that there could be no padding of the national budget without the connivance of the executive arm of government.
Na’Abba noted that it was the constitutional responsibility of the National Assembly to make appropriations on the budget submitted to it by the executive.
Even as it is for the National Assembly to appropriate budget, Mr Fidelis Ejeyi, a public financial management specialist, asks if the parliament has come to terms with the essence of its involvement in the budget process.
“To what extent has legislature counterbalanced executive dominance as well as broaden the budget process to capture wide array of interests to include opposition parties and constituencies.
“What are the extra efforts to ensure effective implementation through oversight roles,’’ he asks.
According to him, the legislature must improve the quality of the budget to better promote balanced economic development, prioritisation and inclusion of wide range of social interests.
“The legilature must act as a buffer between the government and the people thus strengthening democratic process,’’ Ejeyi insists.
Suggesting additional method to budget process, Prof. Ladi Hamalai, Director-General, National Institute for Legislative Studies advocated a budget process bill that will guarantee a budget process reform.
She identified affordability, proritisation and operational efficiency as characteristics of a good budget.
According to her, while Nigeria has improved on prioritisation and deficit financing within the past several years, it is still wanting in operational efficiency.
“We need to work more on improving general performance in terms of actual releases, setting measurable performance targets/outputs and report on outcome or impact; and the question to ask is whether or not we have been getting value for money,’’ she said.
Irrespective of critics’ view, Mr Greg Enyinnaya legal practitioner commended the 8th National Assembly for introducing the National Budget Hearing in 2017 and urged the parliament to sustain the feat.
He, nonetheless, said the process of all-inclusive activity for all Nigerians would create a forum for analysis, discourse and enlightenment on basic recommendations and budget policies of the nation.
He also underscored the need to promote citizens’ engagement in the budgetary process from selection of projects through implementation to monitoring and evaluation.
Enyinnaya further emphasised the need to encourage civic education to guarantee awareness on budget process and its comparative analysis to achieve better budgeting.
All in all, he noted that there ought to be a platform for advocacy and campaigns that could state the importance of transparency and tracking of budgets.(NANFeatures)
**If used, please credit the writer as well as News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)