WHEN on October 12, 2004 President Olusegun Obasanjo presented the 2005 Appropriation Bill to the joint session of the National Assembly he made the following categorical statements: “With regard to implementation of the capital budget, at last year’s budget speech, I set a target of a minimum 80% implementation rate for the year. This was deliberately ambitious as we have not had up to 50% in our recent history. The first step in this was to ensure that the capital budget would be released in adequate amounts and on time. I am happy to inform you that with three quarters gone, we have released N284 billion or 81% of the capital budget into the central CBN account where it is readily accessible to implementing agencies who have met the due process requirements”.
Furthermore the President went on to claim that “the Ministry of Works through FERMA, launched the operation 500 roads programme with a promise to repair and rehabilitate 26,400 kilometres of road nationwide…. I am happy to tell you that at the end of July, a total of 23,760 kilometres of roads had been rehabilitated”.
We need not list seriatim all the other phantom achievements for which the President took credit in that address the totality of which paints the picture of a President completely divorced from the reality of the situation in Nigeria either deliberately or through self-serving misinformation by his ministers and advisers.
To begin with, in a true democracy, not the “militocracy” which had been bequeathed to us by the armed forces of Nigeria, an appropriation bill once passed by the National Assembly becomes a law which a President sworn to uphold the constitution of Nigeria must strive to implement to the fullest. Thus the admission by our President that he had set an “ambitious” target of 80% implementation for himself constitutes wilful disregard for constituted authority by the nation’s number one citizen and the chief law enforcer.
Not contented with that self-damning confession regarding the 2004 budget implementation, the President went on to disclose that previous budgets have not been implemented “up to 50%”, to use his own words. The President, as if in a military dictatorship, has become a law unto himself. There are obviously no longer any pretences to checks and balances between the Executive and the legislative branches.
The failure of the President to implement previous budgets by “up to 50%” while the administration still generated at least N250 billion in deficits each year raises many fundamental questions for the Executive and the Legislative branches. For the President, the questions relate to his statements in the past giving his government “pass mark” for performance and the causes of those deficits. Is it possible that a government that failed to achieve 50% budget implementation by the admission of the President himself can honestly claim to have performed creditably?
Two: Has the failure of government to implement the budget fully not been a direct cause of our slow pace of development in the period under review? Three, by what sort of prodigal spending have we created the economic precedent of not implementing the budget to the fullest yet ending up with huge deficits each and every year? The President’s economic advisers being world class economists can perhaps enlighten Nigerians about this strange occurrence which defies all economic principles known to man.
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