Since Senator Abdul Ningi, (PDP, Bauchi Central) blew the whistle on budget padding by the National Assembly through his BBC interview on Saturday, March 9, 2024, many Nigerians have been gaslighting and scapegoating the federal lawmakers. Yes, they have their hands in Nigeria’s cookie jar but is the executive on any moral high ground on this matter? I don’t think so. Not even the whistleblower, Abdul Ningi, can be exonerated over this matter.
According to Premium Times newspaper of Sunday, March 17, 2024, “The emergence of the phrase “budget padding” into Nigeria’s political lexicon could be traced to 2016, when Abdulmummin Jibrin, the then chairperson of the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, accused the then Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, and some principal officers of the House of padding the budget of the House with projects….. However, controversies over the insertion of projects into the budget could be traced to the beginning of this Fourth Republic.”
Premium Times reported that a review of the budget proposed by President Bola Tinubu and the one eventually passed by the National Assembly show that the allegations of budget padding by Abdul Ningi are largely true. Fifty-three billion naira worth of projects had vague descriptions and locations: for instance, in Ningi’s N500m was allocated for “Energy Poverty Intervention in Selected Rural Cooperators Settlements.” The project is under the Federal College of Land Resources Owerri, Imo State. Further checks revealed that this project was not in the budget proposal submitted by Tinubu. Aside from this project flagged by Ningi, Premium Times also flagged several other projects placed under the same college in Imo. For instance, N500m was allocated for the “construction of solar street lights in selected cooperators settlement.” Like other projects, it has no specific location and it was not contained in the proposed budget submitted by the president. In total, 14 projects worth N2.4bn were injected into the institution’s budget. These 14 projects were not in the proposed budget by the president.
Premium Times went further to say that, “A similar vague project was domiciled in the budget of the Agricultural Council of Nigeria. The N40m project is tagged, “Supply of farm inputs and farm implements in selected communities.” No specific location was put in place for the project. When Tinubu presented the budget, the agency had N2.7bn budgetary allocation. After the lawmakers’ controversial insertions, the agency’s budget was increased to N22.9bn.”
In the budget of the National Centre for Agriculture Mechanisation, over N36bn was inserted in the budget of the agency by the lawmakers. When President Tinubu presented the budget in November 2023, the agency had about N1.8bn as total estimated expenditures. However, by the time the lawmakers dumped their projects in there, the allocation increased to N38.6bn. Indeed, BudgIT, a civic-tech non-profit organisation, allegedly said the NASS inserted a total of 7,447 constituency projects worth N2.24tn in the 2024 budget. The organisation said most of the projects have “no national significance but narrowed to personal interests.”
Ordinarily, Nigerian lawmakers are entitled to a statutory fund called the Zonal Intervention Projects also called constituency projects. The ZIP is an N100bn fund allocated annually under which lawmakers can allocate funds to nominate projects in their constituency. Under the scheme, the N100bn is shared between the Senate and the House of Representatives at a ratio of 40 per cent to 60 per cent respectively. The fund is shared equally across geopolitical zones. However, 10 per cent of the funds of the respective chambers are set aside for the principal officers of both chambers. The sharing formula shows that the principal officers of the Senate and the House get N4bn and N6bn respectively.
Ordinarily, ZIPs are supposed to be nominated by lawmakers, while MDAs are charged with the responsibility of implementing them. However, the process of implementation of ZIPs has been riddled with corruption. Oftentimes, lawmakers, MDAs and contractors collude to siphon the funds. In some instances, lawmakers use personal companies to execute ZIPs. This newspaper in its Monday, March 18, 2024 editorial, said, “According to the ICPC, N529.69 billion was recovered in cash and N1.55 trillion was recovered in assets, totalling a conservative figure of N2.08 trillion, from the 703 of 1,377 preselected projects tracked in 21 states between 2019 and 2022.” Mind-boggling!
The issue of budget padding has always been there. Recall that former President Muhammadu Buhari, while signing the 2018 budget, accused the National Assembly of tampering with the budget sent to them by cutting essential projects and inserting non-essential ones. Buhari said, “I am concerned about some of the changes that the National Assembly has made to the budget proposals that I presented. Many of the projects cut are critical and may be difficult, if not impossible, to implement with the reduced allocation. Some of the new projects inserted by the National Assembly have not been properly conceptualised, designed and cost and will therefore be difficult to execute.”
It is unlikely that the ruckus generated by the alarm raised by Senator Abdul Ningi will bring an end to budget padding. I have granted several media interviews on this issue and I am of the considered view that it is an act of political elite to plunder the resources of their country. The aforementioned examples have shown that the insertions of over 7,000 projects into the proposed 2024 budget were done with malicious and fraudulent intentions going by what various research works have uncovered. However, a forensic analysis of the original appropriation bill from the executive will equally show that projects proposed by the Ministries, Departments and Agencies also follow similar patterns as those inserted by the lawmakers. The budget stinks! Every year, the Centre for Social Justice in Abuja and BudgIT in Lagos conduct an analysis of the Federal Government’s budget and publish startling revelations without any consequence for the milking of the country’s economy dry.
Billions of naira are annually budgeted for renovations of the President’s lodge, while procurement of state-of-the-art vehicles at a humongous amount is a yearly phenomenon. Last year a presidential yacht was procured for about N5bn. Take a look at the budget for travel, entertainment, welfare, procurement of computers and office furniture and you will see that the federal lawmakers are only trying to get a share of their national cake by copying the executive.
In the first instance, Tinubu erred by not submitting the Medium Term Expenditure Framework to the National Assembly by September as required by Section 11(1)(b) of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007. The MTEF and Fiscal Strategy Paper are the basis for the formulation of the budget. They are to be passed before the presentation of the Appropriation Bill. Last year, Tinubu presented the 2024 budget on November 29 and wanted it passed before the end of the year. Suffice it to say that the budget was over 2,000 pages long. How on earth will the federal lawmakers read and digest such a huge document in so short a time? NASS therefore sacrificed thoroughness on the altar of expediency by simply inserting their own zonal intervention projects while not tampering with those already initiated by the executive. It’s all pork-barrel politics. Rub-my-back and I’ll-rub-your-back. The budget was passed on Saturday, December 30 and was presented to the President for assent on Monday, January 1, 2024, and he signed without a fuss. It’s all paddy-paddy show!
In order to sanitise the entire budgeting system of Nigeria, let due process be followed. Let the MDAs and by extension the presidency stop loading the budget with frivolous items and it will be easier to stop the lawmakers from this padding spree. In my estimation, if we are to continue to allow the lawmakers to have zonal intervention projects, then the amount needs to be jerked up. Gross devaluation of the naira and inflation have rendered N100bn insignificant to share among 469 federal lawmakers. It’s not out of place to increase the amount to N1tn with the caveat that projects to be implemented under that intervention should form part of the budget to be presented ab initio and not inserted after the President has presented the budget. As for Senator Abdul Ningi who has been in the National Assembly for 17 years, moving from the House of Representatives to the Senate, and being among the principal officers, he possibly blew the whistle this time round because the odds did not favour him and his region. Such a self-serving motive should not be lauded!
