Group, Lawmakers Propose New Budget Law
From Ahamefula Ogbu in Abuja
A non-governmental organisation in collaboration with the Finance and the Appropriations Committee of the House of Representatives rose from a workshop on effective budgeting with a recommendation that government should be compelled by law to fulfill its social and economic goals as enshrined in chapter II of the 1999 Constitution.
They agreed that the people should be the primary focus of every policy including the budget of the nation so that its content must be seen to impact positively on the lives of the citizens.
"The budget law should compel government to fulfill all social and economic goals provided for in chapter II of the 1999 Constitution with the underlining principle that the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government," they advocated.
The workshop, which was sponsored, by the "Women Advocate Research and Documentation Centre" (WARDC) called for provision for the participation of the civil society in budget making in terms of inputs on what would benefit the people at the grass roots.
They called for the strengthening of the budget office as well as making the office of the Auditor-General independent and self-accounting so that it would be funded through first line charge so that submission of audit reports would be on or before December 31 of each year.
The new budgeting regime they are advocating would want all ministries to submit objectives and action plans which budgets they ask for would achieve while every sect oral demand for funds under a budget must be ready before July of each year.
They wanted the full budget presented to the National Assembly well on time so that all deliberations would be concluded and the budget passed on time for its implementation to commence on the beginning of every year.
Other parts of the new financial regime include making it mandatory for any tier of government to get the approval of the National Assembly before it could take any external or internal loan facility while quarterly reports of financial position of all government concerns would become mandatory.
"The budget reform law should provide for detailed sanctions from all infractions of its provisions and or financial regulations. The budget law should have a provision for defining Consolidated Revenue Fund of the federation as distinct from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of Federal Government of Nigeria. There has been confusion in the use of the two to mean the same," they said.
|
