Tag: welfare

Hon. Opeyemi Bamidele is the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Legislative Budget and Research. In this interview with Victor Oluwasegun and Dele Anofi, he speaks on the benchmark controversy, the challenges of the committee, and other issues.

What was your focus as the  chairman of a committee that is so important to the budgeting process?

Part of the passion, as I assumed office as Chairman, House Committee on Legislative Budget and Research was to do everything possible at the level of the committee and work with the leadership of the House to ensure that the National Assembly Budget and Research Office did not only commence work, but in the real sense of it, becomes relevant and actually get itself grounded as a major resource centre for the members of the House as well as our Senators. Our focus is also to turn it into a centre that would assist researchers from outside the National Assembly and if possible outside the shores of this country.

Would you say you met the office up and running when you became chairman?

In fairness to those who pioneered this project before I got here, it was not that nothing was done to establish the NABRO as a functional office, but unfortunately, beyond getting the building ready and furnishing the office, nothing practically was done in terms of staffing the place, except getting some consultants to shortlist curriculum vitae of some members of staff of the National Assembly.

Eventually, what we did when we came on board was to get the approval of Mr. Speaker with the concurrence of the Senate President for us to open up the office and begin to run it as a functional resource centre. When we got the approval, we were able to second an initial 13-member senior staff of the NASS led by a Director to NABRO for the office to take off. We also ensured that we gave them whatever was needed to operate. With that, the story has not been the same since then because today, we have a NABRO that is different. But then, we can still do much better in terms of staffing.

We are currently improving capacity and we are supposed to have specialized desks like for economy, economic analysis, budget, politics, inter-governmental relations and different sectors of governance. I am sure we will get there eventually, but I want to say that with the initial category of staff seconded to the place, the office has taken off but next will be to massively recruit additional professionals and experts that would be able to help Honourable members and Senators thoroughly and comprehensively develop and strengthen their thoughts and thinking processes in different sectors and areas.

What would you regard as the primary function of NABRO?

NABRO is actually meant to help the House Committee on Budget and Research to do its work. And according to our rules, part of the work of our committee is to make timely and non-partisan analysis on the budget proposal and on the performance of the budget all year round after the Appropriation bill must have been passed to law. It is also meant to assist in developing the capacity of members through local and foreign trainings, and as much as possible, serve as a research centre where members of both chambers can really go and do comprehensive research into different issues.

Having taken off, we are trying to get better because now, we don’t have to rely solely on consultants for everything as we now have a research centre that can take care of most of the things the consultants would be doing. Our target is to have a NABRO that would be able to compare and compete favorably with similar establishments in advanced democracies in terms of structure, staffing and modus operandi. I must say that the attitude of the Speaker was very positive in this regard because without that I don’t know if we could have achieved anything.

Do you consider your job on the 2013-2015 MTEF as a watershed?

I will rather say that there has been a lot of improvement from the past, I won’t call it a watershed because we are going to do much better in future by the grace of God. I can, however, say that our work on the 2013 budget was definitely a statement that it is not going to be business as usual and to show that we really have our hands on the plough.

In the last four months, we have released five different publications that included the mapping of the year 2012 budget, which simplified and analyzed the budget by geo-political zones. We have seven different publications regarding the mapping, one each for a geo-political zone and the Federal Capital Territory. This was meant to assist each member of the House and the Senate in identifying what has been provided for in the 2012 budget, what was on-going and what was new from the previous and current budget were all clearly identified.

And what are these publications meant to achieve?

With the document, our legislators can easily monitor projects in their constituencies without confusion on timing or status. Essentially, the document would make our oversight function much more easier while it would also make those who are supposed to implement the budget accountable. I can assure you, this has introduced a new dimension to the whole process of budget monitoring. In the document, we have asked questions that even Mr. President and the ministers are now asking, which in turn, permanent secretaries and directors are now asking contractors.

In a way, it is like we have helped the Executive develop a template for budget implementation and monitoring. So this goes beyond 2012 budget, it is about whatever we are spending, whatever is on-going and whatever is new. Apart from the budget mapping, there were other publications we produced like our own Mid-year Budget Performance report which was made available to members in September.

Would you consider your efforts on the MTEF a waste if the House forsakes its stance on the $80 benchmark?

In the first instance, I doubt if the House would blink an eyelid on its position on the benchmark but for that to even happen, that is, bending our position for whatever reason, it would not amount to a waste of time and efforts at NABRO.

At NABRO, we are to make recommendations and it would be for the House and the Senate to decide, because NABRO is a creation of the National Assembly and not the other way round. What NABRO was expected to do and has done is to come up with and define the fundamentals on which whatever decision we are taking would be rested. NABRO has done it successfully by explaining that for the same reasons the Executive is proposing $75, these same reasons support $80. Part of the issue defined by NABRO is that we need to be sincere and patriotic about it. For instance, in the last 10 years, has there been a time that the price of oil sold for the so called benchmark? It has always been more and was there any time that the oil price fell below $100 in the last 10 years? No.

But the argument of the Executive is in favour of savings?

Yes it is, but we have moved from the Excess crude account to Sovereign Wealth Fund. The truth of the debate is what did you do with the excess, not whether we have been having these excesses. The Executive has always cited examples of countries with low benchmark but the truth they are not telling Nigerians is that what those countries do with excess crude was not the same we do with ours. We are putting this to the fore, that if we say put it at $80, we show how much the difference of $5 would amount to in a year and this is what we recommend should be done with it.

This will also be appropriated for, we are not leaving it at their discretion but that the difference should be used to reduce our deficit. By that we would be reducing what we owed by 66 percent, and this will create space in our investment environment as our private sector would have space to borrow more. This will be against the tradition of the government mopping up all available funds for borrowing. By reducing our local deficit by 66 percent, the market would be free for private market participant as more money would be available for them to access. By implication, they will be able to turn their industriess around by engaging more people, creating jobs and stimulate the economy.

We are not saying peg the benchmark at $80 just to make more money available to share, or for more money to save but what we are saying is that we are not against you saving, but just take away $5 and reduce our deficit with it. We even gave an alternative, that should the executive find it difficult to reduce our deficit with the $5, that it should then be used for critical intervention in the area of infrastructural development. This is because there are so many roads that have become death traps and you are going to have a budget that is 68 percent recurrent and only 32 precent capital. So, we are saying that the difference between your proposal and ours should be committed to capital expenditure. But we are more persuaded that it should be used to reduce our own local deficit and its not something we cannot defend.

In all, NABRO has been able to clearly reason this out and we have given our recommendation, obviously the House adopted that recommendation as emphatically stated by Mr. Speaker in his vote of thanks at the budget proposal presentation. So, it is up to the Executive to at least come to the realization that they are not the only ones who love Nigeria, they are not the only ones who have the scientific understanding of the economy and how to run the economy. They also have to accept the fact that they do not have the monopoly of how to move Nigeria forward. I think it is high time we descended from our Olympian height as public officers and see through the arguments of other people, especially arguments that are supported by facts and figures and everybody can see.

Yes, they want to save more money because that is why they want a lower benchmark but at the end of the day, they are still borrowing hugely. According to their borrowing plan, they intend borrowing over N700b which they did not include in the MTEF. We raised an eyelid and they brought it separately, so what is the wisdom behind borrowing N700b when you can leave benchmark at $80 and have more money to use, spend or reduce our deficit with.

These are contradictions within the system that Nigerians need to ask questions about. We have listened to a lot of commentators sympathetic to the Executive and calling on the National Assembly to reason with the Executive and go with the $75 benchmark- making it look as if it is an issue between the National Assembly and the Executive. Some have even described it as a row between the National Assembly and the Executive but that is not it. This is because we are all servants of the same master, in this case, the overriding Nigerian public interest.