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Reps protest budget silence on fuel price
From Pascal Nwigwe, Abuja
WHEN it comes to capitalising on presidential speeches and policies to make hard political points at the National Assembly, Ahmed Salik has few peers. They are mostly All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) members in the House of Representatives caucus, which he leads.
He and his party men had staged a walkout during the passage of the 2003 supplementary budget. He protested on the side of Majority House leader, Abdul Ningi against the N1.50 fuel tax.
When President Olusegun Obasanjo presented the 2005 budget last week, Salik and his ANPP caucus rallied journalists into the House of Reps Hearing Room Two and dissected the budget. From the pattern of allocation to the sectors, Salik faulted the budget. He could not put a finger on any single item worthy of commendation. There was nothing to solve the fuel problem in the speech.
"We have a crisis. There is a nationwide strike caused by the hike in the price of petroleum products and the President did not say a word on it," he said.
Peeved by the stance of Salik, Deputy House Majority Leader, Gilbert Nnaji said that Salik should have had the courtesy of reading the budget before criticising it.
Nnaji said: "Things are not done that way. Although the hallmark of democracy is accommodation of divergent opinions, the ANPP Reps should have given the President and the Economic Team the benefit of doubt. The truth is that we are all trying to engage the Federal Executive constructively without really compromising. The ANPP caucus leaders know this."
Ningi told The Guardian that the budget was at present a mere estimates and declaration of intention and that "it is still the same ANPP members complaining that will sit in committees and consider the figures." He wondered what the condemnation was all about even as he claimed that the Minister of Finance was in touch with lawmakers and keeping them abreast of developments.
If the President had been silent on the fuel hike and strike, it is probably because he had deliberated on the matter a night before, with the Peoples Democratic Party caucus and the leadership of the National Assembly, which Salik is member.
At the meeting, the President had denied complicity in the hike.
The ANPP concern however, goes beyond the issue of hikes. Salik had actually raised the issue of marginalisation of the north by complaining that Hydropower projects - mentioned in the budget speech - are being commissioned in just a certain section of the country. He accused the President of neglect of the Mambilla Dam project, which another ANPP member, Umar Shuaib Denge described as capable of supplying electric power to the entire nation. The project can also generate power for export.
The ANPP caucus accused the President of misplacement of priorities in the allocation of resources. Says Salik: "The allocation of a mere two per cent to agriculture shows that the administration is blowing hot and cold with all the talk about boosting the productive sector. Vast majority of the populace are engaged in agriculture."
The complaint of neglect of the agricultural sector is not new. Last year, when three per cent or N9 billion of the budget was allocated to the sector, the former chairman of the House Committee on agriculture, Bako Sarai was disappointed. "Most of the things which have been banned as imports are traced to agriculture. Without a boost in agriculture through increased funding, how will domestic manufacturers get agro-based raw materials to produce substitutes for the banned imports."
The issue attracted the attention of some northern governors who visited the minister of agriculture and the president over the agriculture budget.
The chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Ahmed Lawan said it was worse now. He told The Guardian that after his calculations, the sector got 1.7 per cent.
Nnaji told newsmen a day after the press briefing by ANPP that the figures for agriculture were merely for the sector. "I do not think it is appropriate to pass judgment using just one item, which is the sum proposed for the ministry. The president also said that there was no money to finance the subsidy of fertiliser by 25 per cent. He also mentioned that there is the cassava programme," he said.
Ningi condemned the hasty conclusions over agriculture and mentioned the capitalisation of the Nigerian Agricultural Co-operative and Rural Development Bank, (NACRDB) as mentioned in the budget. Multilateral agencies, he said, were also funding agriculture in Nigeria.
Denge says the NACRDB fund hardly trickles down the rural agrarian communities where the actual farming is carried out.
Chairman of the House sub-committee on the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, Ralph Okeke, contends that while agriculture is important, the budget planners did well in voting adequate funds to Nigeria's foreign missions.
Said Okeke: "The foreign missions are so broke that our diplomatic staff are being compelled to withdraw their children from the good schools they attend. We were also told that serious considerations are being given to the possibility of giving the foreign missions money directly from the Federation Account. That our foreign missions are being especially taken care of by providing for the payment of their arrears certainly cannot be a misplacement of anything."
ANPP Deputy Leader, Ubong Etiebet, thinks the idea of piling up extra earnings and announcing it while debts are rising, was a grand act of misplacement of priority. "We are told that the national foreign debt rose from $32 billion to $34billion. We are also told that a new wonderful relationship has been developed with our creditors. "The question, however, is what we are doing with increased foreign reserves and increased earnings? These are meant to be used in reducing our national debt load and more importantly, for the development of infrastructure," says Etiebet.
And just like Salik, the ANPP Deputy Leader could not locate the President's source of pride about an inflow of $1 billion worth of foreign investments into the country.
Etiebet said that China earns or attracts $600 billion from foreign investments yearly. "If ours is just a billion dollars, then there is a problem. If even our own citizens are opting to invest outside, then there is a problem. Problems are not supposed to be celebrated but to be examined and solved. The problem here apparently is that enough is not being done to attract foreign investment. Without infrastructure, such as electric power and roads, nobody will come to sink his or her money into the Nigerian economy," he said.
Okeke is amused by the ANPP leadership's treatises that foreign reserves ought to be used to pay off debts. He said that Nigeria's foreign reserves stand at $12.5 billion. "This is just enough to sustain six months of importation. The Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation is keeping intact $2.3 billion of excess crude earning. Is the Federal Government to use this money in clearing dept or building roads when the money does not belong to it alone, but also to the states and local councils."
Complains Shuaibu-Denge: "There is no mention of capacity utilisation in the budget and no mention of social indices. There was talk of all the hydropower projects commissioned without a mention of how much power is being generated. There was no mention of how much employment his policies and reforms are generating"
Nnaji asked his colleagues to look on the bright side. He believes government is learning from its mistakes and learning fast too. He finds enough evidence of this in a decision to set aside $151 billion to finance probable deficits. Last year, the government had relied on the repatriation of $500 million traced to the Swiss bank account of the late Head of State, Sani Abacha. Delays in the judicial processes have trapped the money in that country even after a court had ruled that it should be returned to the country. Okeke says there is a greater reason for optimism. From N300 billion, the capital budget has been increased to about N540 billion, an indication that more development projects will be executed next year.
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