Elected officials in Nigeria swore by the 1999 Constitution to uphold the letter and spirit of the constitution as the fundamental law of the land. Fidelity to the constitution is important for a couple of reasons. The first is that the constitution is the foundation of all laws in Nigeria and the source of the authority or power wielded by all authorities in Nigeria. Fidelity to the constitution guarantees the rule of law and a rule-based governance system where every citizen can empirically know his rights and duties in every given situation. This discourse reviews the recent presidential broadcast on palliatives and its adherence to the constitution. It ends with recommendations for the future.
The president’s broadcast provided the details of an intervention in response to the fuel subsidy removal, floating of the naira and the attendant economic hardship. Nigerians would recall that the president merely asked the National Assembly for the approval of an overall budget figure of N500bn for palliatives. The National Assembly approved his request but something was missing. There were no details of the expenditure and governmental activities in the NASS approval. By the clear provisions of section 81 of the constitution, the president prepares and lays estimates of revenues and expenditures for the approval of the National Assembly. It is not about bulk estimates of overall expenditure. What happened would have been the equivalent of NASS approving the bulk N21tn of the 2023 federal budget and allowing former President Muhammadu Buhari to now do the allocation and breakdown.
There should have been concrete details of activities and sub-activities and how much to be apportioned to each of them, thereby providing NASS with clear estimates that would facilitate approval. NASS is also entitled to request further and better particulars including engaging representatives of the implementing ministries, departments and agencies in bilateral discussions. Through this process, NASS could have fine-tuned the proposals and arrived at a more nuanced vote for alleviating hardship in the short, medium and long term. By approving a bulk sum and allowing the president to provide the details without their scrutiny, NASS abdicated its constitutional duty and donated the power of appropriation to the executive, which implies that the executive proposed and approved of the expenditure. NASS by this action is erecting a constitutional dictatorship and should not be heard to complain if this precedent is followed to its logical conclusion.
A closer look at some of President Tinubu’s proposed interventions will show that they would have befitted more detailed public scrutiny by the representatives of the people in NASS. Even if NASS had not wanted to perform its constitutional duty, opportunities for popular participation in the formulation of the interventions would have facilitated the blocking of gaps. While the N75bn for 75 enterprises at a single-digit interest rate repayable over 60 months is a good long-term measure, it offers no immediate alleviation of the economic hardship to the ordinary Nigerian. The application, processing and due diligence would take time. The loans would pass through money deposit banks or development banks and the implication is that first loans would not be rolled out until early 2024. The N50bn conditional grant to one million nano businesses – 1,300 nano businesses in each of the 774 local governments at N50,000 each, cannot be implemented in 2023. There is no national register of such businesses. It will require lead time for a register to be complied and verified; applications, processing and due diligence before disbursement. Otherwise, this fund will simply be spent on nominees of political office holders of the ruling party. Furthermore, the disbursement of N75bn to 100,000 small and medium-scale enterprises will also follow the same path. These activities are not hardship-alleviating measures properly so called and would not have been approved as such by a discerning NASS.
The release of 200,000 metric tonnes of grains from the strategic reserves is floating. The central question is how it will be distributed or sold so as to reach the poorest of the poor. Otherwise, it would go to families that do not need the subsidy, especially the political faithful and loyalists of the ruling party who live above the poverty threshold. Also, the N200bn dedicated to agriculture for the cultivation of maize, rice, wheat and cassava cannot provide immediate relief and has to await the planting, nurturing, maturation and harvesting of these crops. But there is even a more fundamental challenge, a similar programme, the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme of the Central Bank of Nigeria, implemented over six years which disbursed over N1tn yielded little or no results. This fund will still pass through development finance institutions. It is therefore at best a medium-term intervention.
Now to the N100bn voted for 3,000 CNG powered 20-seater buses; this looks like an interesting option. But there is a caveat. This should have been contracted even before the removal of fuel subsidy so that they will be available from day one after the removal of the subsidy. And the most important aspect of this option is that it will be a huge waste of opportunities if the buses are imported and not produced or assembled locally by our vehicle production plants. This is not just an opportunity to award contracts and take kickbacks but one to enhance the local capacity for vehicle production, create jobs and improve the production capacity of Nigerian firms.
The president purported to remove all impediments to students who may wish to benefit from the students’ academic loan scheme provided by law. It is imperative to state that the president has no such powers to amend or reform any law validly passed by NASS and assented to by him through a proclamation or a national broadcast. It requires the amendment of the law by NASS. Again, the president talked about an Infrastructure Support Fund which he earlier announced without an enabling law. This fund requires an enabling legislative framework that goes through the law-making process and assent by the president.
The palliatives were clearly not responsive to the objectives of providing immediate succour or even medium-term succour to citizens who were undergoing unprecedented hardship. They were not properly targeted and they seemed to have the objective of taking the sail out of the strike that organised labour had called. There were clear missing links in the speech of the president in terms of premises and conclusions. Having identified corruption as the bane of the rested fuel subsidy regime at a time Nigeria was undergoing a fiscal crisis, the expectation was that measures were to be rolled out to recover the stolen billions. Again, there was no word on local refining of crude oil after it became clear that the lack of local refining capacity has contributed in no small measure to the cost of petroleum products and hardship in the land.
In the final analysis, the president and NASS have the opportunity to remedy their shortcomings and improve economic and fiscal governance so as to alleviate the hardship in the land. For NASS, you have started the process of earning the rubber stamp appellation. Please stop, rethink and perform your constitutional duty.
