BUDGET 2019 OF NO HOPE; DR BUKOLA SARAKI HAS POINTS
On December 19, 2018, President Muhamadu Buhari presented the 2019 budget of the Federal Government of Nigeria (FG) to the joint houses of National Assembly (NASS) under the joint leadership of Dr Bukola Saraki; the President of the Senate and Mr Yakubu Dogara; the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The following day; December 20, 2018 at an interactive session between the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) presidential candidate; former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar and the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Abuja it was reported that Dr Bukola Saraki remarked thus “… we all heard the 2019 budget, that is a budget that has no hope for anybody because if you look at the statistics and the figures, there’s poverty, if you look at the figures based on revenues that are coming in… there is nothing left so where’s the future. There must be an alternative and that is what we hope ………..”. Rights and Freedom Advocates (RIFA) have noted the altercations and urchins-style of the leadership of the National Assembly with serious concern as their actions resemble that of a nation foe.
Going by the revelations coming from National Assembly and various stakeholders since 2016 about the happenings to national budget at the house, one could less agree with Dr Bukola Saraki that the 2019 budget presents no hope to fraudsters, budget manipulators, perfidious citizens who have destroyed our nation, vote buyers and election riggers as the hope for deeper budget pad dimmed for the house due to previous exposition of the fraudulent insertion into national budget.
Due to 2016 massive budget padding revelation whereby the National Assembly padded the budget with over N481 billion leading to 22 directors who coordinated the padding being removed from budget office at a time the Speaker of the House; Yakubu Dogara openly declared that budget padding was not a crime in Nigeria as if he did not read the EFCC Act which stipulates same as criminal offence, one cannot expect the Senate president who had hoped to benefit from same padding to finance election as revealed by Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala that the government then bribed the national assembly N17 billion in 2015 to have the budget passed which none of the principal officers then had denied till date.
With “Buharinomics” such sleaze is no longer possible with FG budget under Buhari which definitely made people like Dr Saraki lost hope in getting anything through back door for any campaign. Nigerians cannot forget in a hurry that the N17billion then was spent on election campaigns of the NASS members which made some of them including Dr Bukola Saraki to entice the people of their constituencies for return tickets for their usual robbery of the nation resources.
In his 2017 budget defence, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, faced the discomfiture of explaining how a strange N2 billion crept into the ministry’s budget, under the expenditure sub-head: “Regional Housing Scheme.” This is outside the N41.9 billion allocated to the National Housing Programme in the budget. “It is not our project…It is a Ministry of Finance initiative…That is not what we submitted. We did not submit that proposal,” Fashola explained without knowing the NASS members had padded the budget as usual.
In 2016, Fashola’s counterpart in the Ministry of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, earlier withdrew the purported budget of the ministry to purge it of its strange elements when he discovered that crooks had moved N15.7 billion for capital projects to other areas, just as funds were set aside for projects on which no final decisions had been taken.
In 2017 again, about 55 agencies had up to 276 curious items in their budgets, costing about N145 billion. This is aside the annual bazaar in the NASS budget, for which a member of the House of Representatives, Abdulmumin Jibrin, said in 2016, “There is a limit to appropriation.” For daring to expose how the leadership inserted N40 billion projects.
Then, he was slammed with a 180-day legislative suspension. So, with Buhari 2019 budget, truly there is no future for the rogues to return to National Assembly which necessitates fear of our NASS members. RIFA only ask Saraki and colleagues to tell us what they would do with whatever they acquire at the expense of the nation after their death.
For seven good months NASS was with 2018 budget looking for where to pad. Eventually, the NASS created spurious projects into the projects claiming they were constituency projects. Until now, no NASS member has provided audited account of constituency fund collected on behalf of their constituencies.
So, since Dr Saraki and colleagues who usually pad budget to swindle us cannot get the usual “Ghana must go” before the budget was passed, we cannot expect them to see any hope in the budget that seeks to provide dividends of democracy to the citizens including downtrodden populace taking power of surreptitious inclusion of strange projects away from the avaricious Assembly members.
The 2018 budget estimate was increased from N8.6 trillion submitted by the President in November 2017 to N9.120 trillion when passed by the National Assembly in May 2018 as if they do not know that it is ultra vires for legislature to prepare budget but only to reduce or increase allocations from projects only presented by the executive. Whatever projects the legislature has must have been taken to civil servants for inclusion in the nation budget. The NASS made cuts amounting to 347 billion naira in the allocations to 4,700 projects submitted to them for consideration and introduced 6,403 projects of their own amounting to 578billion naira.
Many of the projects cut were critical such as Mambilla power plant, 2nd Niger bridge, East-West Road, Bonny-Bodo road, Lagos-Ibadan road by aggregate of N11.5billion making the projects difficult and impossible to implement with the reduced allocation. Even the pension and wage adjustment account were slashed by N5billion. Enugu Airport terminal building, Maritime University, Delta State take-off grant was also cut from N2billion to N500million and N5billion to N3.4billion respectively. Is that not an indication of anti-people NASS? Yet they would blame executive for their disservice to the nation.
Moreover, many of the new projects introduced by the National Assembly have been added to the budgets of most MDAs with no consideration for institutional capacity to execute them or the incremental recurrent expenditure that might be required. As it was, some of the projects inserted by the NASS related to matters that were the responsibility of the States and Local Governments, and for which the Federal Government should therefore not be unduly burdened.
But trust NASS they won’t want Federal auditor to monitor their mismanagement of the fund and so would always find way to beat due process. That is why the whole of the NASS N139.5billion budget for 2018, the details were not made public by the house till date.
Budgit which is a non-governmental organization wrote a letter to Bukola Saraki to account for the constituency fund he collected and till date there was no evidence that he has replied.
Yet he and colleagues would be deceiving us that they carry out oversight functions of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) which they only go there to dupe. Most of the NASS members hide huge sum of money in budgets of Federal MDAs in their constituencies and later go there to claim it after the budget might have been approved.
Now, most civil servants who would be responsible to audit queries are not ready to dance to the tune of NASS members and you want Dr Saraki to regard such budget as budget of hope for looters? No way, he and his colleagues won’t allow that.
Now, NASS has suspended budget discussion and approval till after the 2019 election. Would that have been possible if the FG has allowed them pad the budget again to include their usual election allowances which would have made them hurriedly approve the budget for them to claim their election cash for campaign? It is better we have such a budget that will not return the enemies of Nigeria to National Assembly again.
So, RIFA urge Dr Bukola Saraki and colleagues to note that patriotic Nigerians are satisfied with the budget that presents no hope to criminals presenting themselves as our leaders so that Nigeria can progress without them.
Luqman Soliu
President,
Rights and Freedom Advocates (RIFA)
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