President Muhammadu Buhari just made two telling points: that he rated low, leaders of the outgoing 8th National Assembly, Senate President Bukola Saraki and Speaker Yakubu Dogara — for not promptly passing the budget, all through their four-year legislative tenure.
At another occasion, during the visit to him of some Ecobank top shots, the president adduced the present socio-economic debacle to, as The Nation captured in its headline, “decades of neglect and resource mismanagement …”
Slack approach to budgets, the revenue generating and spending plan for a financial year, has a close bearing to mushrooming poverty and insecurity, over the years. That simply means the state had been loose at its budgetary duties, thus causing avoidable citizen angst.
Also closely connected to this problem is tardiness, at budget passage, by the legislature. Indeed, the president pointedly accused both Saraki and Dogara of deliberate delay; hoping that by allegedly delaying the budget, they were personally hurting the president.
No! — the president, in triumph, homed in: they only hurt the people. That is absolutely correct, without necessarily queuing up behind the president on this one. Indeed, hurting the people, in spoiling for cheap political points, is grand betrayal of the legislative — and political — mandate.
That refocuses the budget as the core of efficient and effective deployment of state resources, to avert neglect and resource mismanagement, causing future poverty and insecurity.
Still, the federal executive, which the president heads, has not been totally blameless in the budget delay fiasco, that plagued the Buhari administration in its last four years.
The 8th National Assembly could well have earned fair notoriety, given the way Saraki and Dogara emerged as leaders, very much against the will of their then ruling party; and how the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) merrily goaded them to ground the Buhari government, for illicit political gains.
Yet, the executive themselves provided the tinder, for the illicit blaze. It was agreed the budget estimates be submitted to the National Assembly by September, to fully make it a January to December financial year. But the Buhari presidency never met this deadline.
In 2017 (for the 2018 budget year), it submitted the proposals in November. In 2018 (for Budget 2019), it submitted the documents in December. Now, you don’t in a relay race, hand over the baton as a laggard, and expect the anchor to zoom to the tape before everyone, do you?
Yes, the 8th National Assembly stands condemned for its bad faith but the executive too shares part of the blame.
Beyond praise and blame, however, this new mandate, that started yesterday, offers fresh opportunities for a fresh start. Between the president and the National Assembly, the voters have spoken loud who they trusted more; and the right lessons have been learnt.
That sacred mandate must, therefore, be utilized to chart a new productive path, by swift budget approval and implementation. Let both the Presidency and the in-coming 9th National Assembly seize the moment and consummate a new detente, on budget collaboration.
The present generation would be glad they did. The future generations too could just be saved from avoidable neglect and resource mismanagement. That could well avert mass poverty and insecurity.
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