National assembly getting ready for budget reform

BUDGET reform took the center stage once again during the week. The event was a gallery colloquium on budget matters. The increasing focus on budget reform by the National Assembly may be understandable considering the importance of the budget in the life of a country.

Senate President, Abubakar Bukola Saraki, saw the need for immediate reform of the budget process apparently because of the near fiasco that attended the 2016 Budget.

Saraki quickly moved to inaugurate a Budget Reform Committee empanelled to articulate ways and means to widen the budget process and make the fiscal document work.

Director-General National Institute for Legislative Studies, Dr. Ladi Hamalai, who is also a member of Saraki's Budget Reform Committee, followed up with a round table on budget reform, National Assembly and the appropriation process.

For Hamalai, the economic development challenges that have bedeviled the country are partly traceable to the quality of public finance management. The DG believes the management of annual budget, medium term expenditure framework and fiscal strategy and development plans have been marred by high level of inefficiency, ineffectiveness and lack of transparency.

Conveners of the Gallery Colloquium, OrderPaper.Ng, an independent online portal conceived to report with bias for the legislature, felt the need to seek a way forward for the country's frequent annual budget debacle. The theme of the event, "Budget as a tool for accelerated economic development in Nigeria," encapsulated the thinking of conveners of the colloquium. It was a gathering of stakeholders from the executive, legislature and civil society organisations.

With the much abused 2016 Budget gradually running out its time frame and the heightened expectation for the presentation of the 2017 Appropriation Bill by President Muhammadu Buhari, time may have come for members of the National Assembly to walk their talk.

Interestingly, the incalculable damage and embarrassment the National Assembly suffered following allegations of missing and padded budget may have forced the National Assembly leadership to embrace the call for a sweeping budget reform.

Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, who was at the colloquium, said it is clearly evident, the legislature is unquestionably at the heart of the budget process, not only in the country but in all countries practicing presidential democracy.

The budget, Dogara said, is a compendium of "who gets what, when and how" which involves essentially allocation and distribution of available resources among competing sectors and demands.

Talking about the role of the legislature in the budget process, Dogara said recent events have brought to the fore the extent of the powers of the National Assembly with respect to the budget process.

Many commentators, including lawyers, he said, have contended that the power of the National Assembly is restricted to examining the budget and making corrections where necessary while others believe that the appropriation power enables the National Assembly to reduce but not to increase expenditure and that the legislature lacks power to introduce new items into the budget.

A close examination of the constitution, he pointed out shows otherwise. He submitted that those who contend that the National Assembly cannot increase the budget but can only reduce it are trying to import the British Parliamentary law into a Presidential system of government.

In addition, he said, if the Constitution intended that the National Assembly should not have power to increase a budget item, it should have said so."

The Speaker reflected with nostalgia that a review of how annual budgets or Appropriation Bills have been prepared and executed in the country since 1999 will reveal an unsatisfactory state of affairs.

Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who was also at the colloquium did not agree with Dogara less.

Ekweremadu submitted that the greatest culprit in the issue of budget process is the time frame in which budgets are presented to the National Assembly.

He believed that whatever budget reform that needed to be done must address the problem of time frame for the presentation of the Appropriation Bill first.

He said, "The American Congress has a period of eight to 10 months sometimes to consider the American budget. Technically, we have only one day to consider it because under the constitution, the President can present the budget on the last day of December and you expect the budget to start the first day of January. So, that means you have less than 24 hours to pass it.

The Deputy Senate President also raised the issue of public hearing. He said, "I attended a United Nations workshop in 2012 and the issue of budget came up. There was a statistics on the rating of the budgetary process of various countries. Nigeria was one of the least rated. The reason is that we are one of the few countries that did not subject our budget to public hearing. But going forward, the National Assembly must subject the Appropriation Bill to public hearing.

It makes it impossible for the National Assembly to interrogate the budget properly. In 2008 when Musa Yar'Adua was the President, he brought the budget early enough and we decided to interrogate certain MDAs. So, if we have enough time, the National Assembly will have sufficient time to also interrogate the budget properly, so that what we are witnessing now will be a thing of the past."

One of the panelists at the event, Senator Chris Anyanwu, blamed the problem on lack of synergy in the budget process.

Anyanwu believed that discussion on the budget most often than not tends to be emotional because most commentators speak to please the Executive.

She submitted that the Executive should understand that the Legislature has a responsibility over money bill.

It was the thinking of some participants that a situation where the budget estimates are made and the government begins to look for ways to fund the budget is not healthy.