Rumbles Over 2016 Budget …What Federal Executive Didn’t Do

Buhari and Amaechi

When about a month ago, the original copy of the 2016 Budget presented to a joint session of the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari reportedly disappeared, the Senate raised an alarm. After blames and counter blames and from what we today know, it has become clear to Nigerians that it was not a false alarm.
The truth was that the original document was indeed removed and certain corrections made, which Senators called padding. Some Senators fingered one of Buhari’s aides on National Assembly Matters for complicity in the smuggling-in of fresh issues into the original fiscal document.
What is clear to Nigerians today is that the Transport Ministry’s Calabar-Lagos rail project was one of the additions made to the budget after its disappearance.
When the matter was resolved or thought to have been resolved, the executive concluded that the Senate would work with the amended version, based on which Transport Minister, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, was allowed to waste his time defending the new insertion. Unfortunately, Amaechi may be close to the President, but is not the President.
Senate sources apparently resolved to abide by the Constitution which makes Buhari the lone official with powers to withdraw, amend and return the Budget document he presented. None other, has the power to add or subtract from the fiscal document and rather than toe the constitutional path, the executive through Amaechi hoped that all things were possible.
After claims and counter claims over the non-reflection of the Calabar-Lagos Rail project in the original budget copy Buhari presented, the Media Adviser to the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Mr James Akpandem, last Tuesday insisted that the relevant committees of the Parliament received the document.
Relevant Committees? The Budget was presented to the Senate by President Buhari. It is the Senate that should assign necessary sections to various committees of the Senate. Did Akpandem imply, as perceived by many that it was during the committee stage that documents concerning projects not originally captured were forwarded? Likely.
This is because Chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Abdullahi Sabi was unequivocal when he debunked claims by some members of the executive that the controversial N60 billion Calabar-Lagos rail project was captured in the original Budget copy presented by Buhari to the NASS.
Senator Sabi insisted that ‘contrary to the position of the executive that the Amaechi project was captured in the budget, (it) was not included’, and asked the executive to stop instigating Nigerians against the legislature which according to him, has done so much in the budget to ensure dividends of democracy were speedily delivered to them.
Akpandem’s statement tacitly confirmed the Senate’s position when he said in his statement, ‘it will be recalled that the Budget office (of the Executive) made a number of errors IN THE INITIAL PROPOSALS (emphasis mine) of a number of ministries’.
He went further, “These errors were all corrected by the Ministry of Budget and National Planning and the corrected versions were submitted to the relevant Committees of the National Assembly. This INCLUDED THAT OF THE MINISTERY OF TRANSPORT (emphasis mine).
Whose duty is it to correct mistakes made in a fiscal document presented to the National Assembly by the President? Only the President. Otherwise, any Ministry could amend its own allocation through the Assembly’s Committee and alter the original document.
If the Budget Ministry, an arm of the Executive inadvertently omitted a project as important as the Calabar-Lagos rail project, the option should not have been to secretly withdraw the original document and replace it with the corrected version and expect the law makers to accept because it affected Amaechi. The right thing to do, as professed change agents, was to acknowledge the omission or mistakes made by the Budget Department, officially withdraw the budget proposal, make the desired corrections and infusions, and have the President return the corrected version to the National Assembly for their work.
Since no one was punished for what became known to Nigerians as padding of the budget, there is no telling what cannot be done. So, a careful Senate ought to go strictly by the books, meaning, working on the original proposals presented to it by President Buhari and nothing else.
Amaechi may be close to Buhari and so can get away with most things. He left office without handing over to a successor and got away with it. He shut down an arm of the government, the Judiciary in Rivers State for nearly two years and got away with it. He traversed the state during the rerun elections guided by armed soldiers against the electoral law which limited his movement to Ubima, and got away with it.
So why should a simple inclusion of a project ‘inadvertently’ left out by the budget office be such a problem to him? It must have been with that mindset, that Amaechi apparently appeared before the Senate Committee defending what was not part of his hosts’ original mandate. So, they allowed Amaechi to defend what he alone had a mandate to defend and not what his listeners wanted to hear.
According to Akpandem, “the amended Ministry of Transport budget was accepted by the relevant committees and that was the version defended by the Minister of Transport and his team”.
The question is, if the Calabar-Lagos project was in the Ministry’s proposal in the original budget presented to the NASS by Buhari, what was contained in the amended version? What was that, that was amended?
The APC-led Federal Government should come to terms with reality. This is a democracy where, separation of powers is key and clearly outlined. The Executive arm should perform its functions properly and allow the Legislature perform its own duties.
The Budget was a product of the Executive arm. Only after a thorough perusal, study, debate and eventual adoption, is the President expected to present same to the legislature. From that moment, the document belongs to the National Assembly.
It is the duty of the law-makers, also as elected representatives of the people, to study the document and eventually pass it into law. That is when the budget becomes a national document, belonging neither to the executive nor the legislature.
Therefore, the Federal Government must do the needful. Blame itself for the initial errors, President’s failure to recall the document amidst rumours of padding and failing to represent a vetted and final copy. Sad as it is, there is some iota of truth that the Calabar-Lagos rail was not captured in the original budget presented to the NASS.
The Budget Ministry’s Media Adviser paid so much premium to the Calabar- Lagos rail project, claiming the N60 billion provided in the budget for it and the Lagos-Kano rail lines, respectively, is counterpart funding to support the Chinese financing the projects.
“These projects are part of the strategic implementation plan of the government which was disclosed by the Minister of Budget and National Planning at the National Economic Council retreat in March 2016.”
So why is such a key project now an issue of contention? Why are Nigerians getting the impression that all the denials of disappearance of original copy of the 2016 Budget and half truths about non-padding, are all to protect an over-sight by the Transport and Budget Ministries? Why is it difficult for self-acclaimed change agents to accept mistakes, make amends and move forward, rather than invent new lies to correct initial lies?
My Agony is that the Executive arm gave Nigerians the impression that the Senate saw and deliberately removed the Calabar-Lagos Rail project from the budget as presented to it by the President. Not knowing that it was President Amaechi that forwarded and defended his own version.
But there can only be one President, that’s how the Senate and Nigerians view it.
Methinks, the Federal Government should forward a supplementary budget to cover its obvious slip, as demanded by the Senate and not waste time bickering over when and how the rail project was and was not injected into the 2016 appropriation bill, now passed.
But first, President Buhari should sign the budget into law.

Soye Wilson Jamabo