At last, the stage is set for the passage of this year’s budget. The Senate and House of Represenatives yesterday confirmed that the bill will become law next week. VICTOR OLUWASEGUN writes on the executive/legislative feud that held the economy down for more than five months.
AN end is in sight to the delay in the passage of this year’s budget. The N8.612 trillion 2018 Appropriation Bill will be passed next week, the House of Representatives assured yesterday.
The promise from the lower chamber of the National Assembly came on the heels of a similar assurance from the Senate.
Should both chambers keep to their words, the passage will be coming almost six months after it was presented by President Muhammadu Buhari to the joint session of the National Assembly.
The bill, tagged: “Budget of Consolidation” has been na issue of controversy between the executive and the legislature, with one blaming the delay on the other.
But barring the unforeseen, bill will be passed into law next week, the Chairman, House Committee on Media and Publicity, Abdulrasak Namdas, told reporters in Abuja yesterday.
Namdas was echoing Senate’s spokesman Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, who had earlier assured on the passage by the National Assembly.
The House of Representatives spokesman said: “By the Grace of God, we will lay the budget on Tuesday (next week) and then try to pass it that same week.
“But where laying it on Tuesday and I can assure you that within that same week, we’re going to pass it. We tried to do that, but you know, the budget is a voluminous document.
“Actually, we’ve been working hard so that we can beat the deadline, and hopefully this time around, I can assure you that by next week, everything about the budget will be concluded and passed.”
On the proposed three-day suspension of legislative activities to protest the killings across the country, Namdas said the protest will take effect after the passage of the Appropriation Bill and follow no definite pattern.
“If you recall, there had be conflicting dates given by the House on when Nigerians should expect the passage of the Appropriation Bill.”
As controversy over the budget raged, House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara once announced that the budget would be ready by late April, a promised that was quickly countered by the Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation, Mustapha Dawaki. He said the budget would be ready in May.
In March, Dogara told his colleagues at plenary that the bill would be passed on April 24.
The Chairman of the House Committee on Media &Public Affairs, who spoke earlier with The Nation on the telephone, said the bill would be passed in April.
He said: “The Bill will be passed before the end of April, I assure you. I will be briefing and updating you at every stage.”
The bill passed second reading on the floor of the House on December 5, 2017 and the Speaker’s pronouncement that the budget would be passed on April 24 was made on March 20.
There were hopes of an early passage for the budget after it was proposed to the National Assembly in November last year by the President.
But there were enough reasons to fear that the bill was going to suffer delay just like previous proposals.
A member of the House, Nicholas Ossai (Delta-APC), blamed the the delay to annual budget passage on the fault of the executive.
“It’s this characteristic refusal of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to defend their budgets before the relevant committees of the National Assembly that results in late budget passage.”
Ossai said that last year’s passage, like the previous proposals, was presented late to the parliament for consideration and passage.
He said: “The executive ought to bring the budget in the first week of October to give three months for the legislature to address the issues critically, looking at the books and performance of preceding budget.
“Sometimes you blame the executive because you invite them to come and expatiate on the budget items and they find it very difficult. I don’t know what they are hiding from the legislature.”
At a joint public hearing on the budget on March 27, the Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, Mustapha Dawaki, foreclosed the possibility of passing the bill before this month.
According to him, the National Assembly agreed that since the budget could not be passed by March 31, the life of the 2017 budget must be extended to May 31.
Dawaki disclosed that the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF) has been put on notice about the extension of last year’s budget till May 31.
He said: “We are told that the office of the accountant general is expected to close the account as at March ending.
“So, we have written a letter yesterday, drawing his attention to the fact that the budget should be extended to May 31.”
Despite the increase in capital project allocations, the budget has a huge recurrent, as a huge chunk of it has been allocated to key ministries for salaries and overheads.
For instance, while interior ministry has N510.87 billion, education has N435. 01 billion, defence (N422.43 billion), Health (N269.34 billion).
The personnel cost, according to the executive, is projected to spike by 12 per cent in the 2018 Budget and overhead will increase by N26 billion in the current year. All these show a rise in government’s spending on its workforce.
But the ordinary man’s concern has been the prolonged delay in budget passage, which they believe stripped them of the dividends of democracy.
The sectoral allocations show that 30.8 per cent is allocated to capital projects. For instance power, works & Housing got N 555.88 billion; transportation (N263.10 billion); Special Intervention Programmes (N150 billion); defence (145 billion); agriculture & rural development (N118. 98 billion); water resources (N95.11 billion); industry trade & investment (N82.92 billion) and interior (63.26 billion).
Others are: education (N61.73 billion); Universal Basic Education Commission (N109. 06 billion); health (N71. 11) billion; Federal Capital Territory (N40.30 billion); Zonal Intervention Projects (N100 billion); Northeast Intervention Fund (N45 billion); Niger Delta Ministry (N53. 89 billion) and Niger Delta Development Commission (N71. 20 billion).
Other projects being held up by the late budget passage include the N9.8 Mambilla Hydro Power Project; N8.5 billion counterpart funding for transmission lines and N12 billion counterpart funding for substations; the N35.41 National Housing Programme; N10 billion for the 2nd Niger Bridge and the N30 billion for “strategic road construction and rehabilitation.”