When the House of Representatives suspended plenary on Oct.12 to allow various committees to attend to Ministries Department and Agencies (MDAs) in defence of their 2023 budget proposal not a few lawmakers were excited about the exercise.
President Muhammadu Buhari had on Oct. 7 before the joint session of the national assembly presented N20.51 trillion 2023 appropriation.
Some committee chairmen saw the yearly budget defence appearance by MDAs as an annual ritual when each segment of the budget already has funds allocated to it under envelop budgeting system.
According to experts envelop budgeting entails assigning every spending category in a budget to envelops with each envelop allocated a fix amount of money which cannot be transferred to another envelop.
At the resumption of plenary, Speaker of House of Reps, Rep Femi Gbajabiamila said the committees of the House are working on 2023 budget appropriations Bill, to ensure that the final budget serves the needs of Nigerians.
He said legislators were also working to ensure that, in line with the reforms of the 9th Assembly, the lawmakers would have a final bill ready for presidential assent before the end of the year.
According to him it is not an easy task to deliver an implementable budget at a time of significant financial limitations.
However, commenting on the 2023 budget proposal, Rep. Patrick Asadu, member, representing, Nsuka/Igbo-Eze South Federal Constituency of Enugu State said the lawmakers needed to review their budget debate mechanisms.
Asadu, who is the Chairman, House Committee on National Inland Waterways (NIWA) said he was particularly worried after engagement with NIWA authorities on its 2023 budget proposal。
“I noticed that we do not budget for what we need rather we budget for what our forefathers need. We put money where money is not needed and don’t put money where money is needed.
“We know you what flood did to Nigerians few months ago and as we look into the budget there’s no provision to address occurrence of such natural disasters”, he said.
According to him, what it means is that states that were taken over by flood will be taken over by more flood because the country is doing nothing to address the problem.
According to him, the budget envelop system Nigeria is adopting does not make provisions for emergency.
“We have seen budgets where they will say this is for capital we should not touch it, when you are capturing what was captured 15- 20 years ago.
Also, the House of Reps Committee on Public Procurement rejected N58 million capital allocation in the 2023 budget proposal for the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP)。
Led by its chairman, Rep. Nassir Ahmed, the Committee rejected the budget proposal when Mr Mamman Ahmadu, Director General, BPP appeared before it to defend the budget proosal.
“This amount is too little to run an agency, even if you are working with the envelope system the onus is on you to make a case for more money.
“So if you do not make that case and bring it before the committee, no one is going to do that for you. You cannot run an agency with N58 million, it’s too small. You must make a strong case.
“Your agency is very relevant to the growth of this country. If you get your procurement right, there will be less cost and you will get the best hands to do the job”, he said.
The committee chairman faulted the reduction of the capital expenditure from N94 million to N58 million, saying, “I don’t understand why an important agency like BPP will be allocated N58 million.
“We must sit with the Senate committee to see how the budget can be increased; we should look at this as a committee”, Ahmed said.
Notwithstanding the current insecurity in the country, the 2023 police budget proposal was slashed from N889, 681, 595, 517.74 to N796, 785, 034, 379. 56.
The slash was largely blamed on the envelope budgeting system.
The Police decried the reduction stressing that it portends danger for the operations of the law enforcement agency.
Some lawmakers argue that they should be given the liberty to perform their constitutional roles of allocating funds to MDAs based on their needs rather than making them `robber stamps’ under the envelop budgeting system.
CREDITED: Femi Ogunshola, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)
