Jubrin, Dogara et al And Our Change.
As the Speaker of the University of Lagos Students Union Government
between 1993 and 1994, at a time student unionism had not been castrated
and rendered an impotent buffoon it has become today, I know a bit of
budget presentation and its ratification process by parliament and
subsequent signing into law by the President. Yes, you might say student
union politics is different from national politics and you might be right
to the extent that student union politics, in its very best, as we had at
that time, is far more refined and sophisticated than the rumble in the
jungle we have in Nigeria as politics. In student union politics, as we
had in ULSU in those days, you have members of parliament drawn from all
departments and faculties, an admixture of the brightest and best drawn
from various shades and races.
When the campaign for change was trending, there was a firm promise that
the old sordid way must give place for Nigeria to recover its battered
soul and move on in the comity of progressive nations. This was the
central message of Change and the philosophical gird of the Muhammadu
Buhari regime that berthed in May last year. Yes, things must change from
the very insidious ways that have seen Nigeria almost crumbled to its
knees in five decades of uncensored larceny. The old, stale order that has
fired the shooting pins of unimaginable corruption, which has hobbled the
prospects of an oil rich nation for decades must be overthrown for a newer
and saner order that will lead Nigeria’s recovery and kick start its
meaningful quest for greatness.
In the budget cycle, the executive proposes its yearly financial estimates
and lays it before the parliament. The parliament on its part and in line
with its constitutional duties, goes through the budget proposal,
scrutinises the provisions, crosses the t’s and dots the i’s to ensure
that the resources are rightly allocated to the budget heads without
inflating allocations. In ULSU in those days, budget periods are the most
active periods when parliamentarians, drawn from the various departments,
faculties and interests, come to the parliament with their calculators and
other mathematical gadgets to scrutinise the budget to ensure that cheeky
members of the executive do not inject their own interests into the budget
through inflating the costs of items in the budget heads for their own
selfish benefits. As parliamentarians, it was not our duty to insert newer
budget heads (or line items) to the proposal because it is not the duty of
the parliament to propose projects but to scrutinise and ensure that funds
were appropriately allocated.
It is not the duty of legislators to allocate funds. That is exclusively
an executive function. It is not within the power of legislators to
insert new projects into the budget. It is not the duty of legislators to
assume the duty of executives but to checkmate their antics by ensuring
that budgets are not inflated for selfish reasons or funds are
realistically allocated. No law anywhere in the world, gives the
legislature, invested with powers to scrutinise and approve, the added
power to insert new budget heads or line items in a budget. It is absurd
seeing legislators today shamelessly parroting the nonsense in the media
that legislators have powers to include line items or budget heads in a
budget. This is pure fallacy and no law in any part of the world grants
legislators power to assume executive duties. Most importantly, it is the
function of the parliament to monitor budget execution to ensure the
executive does not deviate from rightly implementing what were approved in
the budget.
For decades, the Nigerian legislature has brought to bear on the culture
of budgets, a deep corruptive influence by taking over the duties of the
executive by initiating fresh budget heads outside the proposals of the
executive. It is not like a military take over but rather a rip off from
the compromise it struck with equally dubious executives that had the
single mindset of defrauding the masses and growing fat on the lifeblood
of the Nigerian masses. At the end of each budget year, monies in the
budget had been shared between the executive and the legislature while the
masses hold on to empty shells of multi trillion Naira annual budgets that
end up not holding even a flimsy candle for them. A culture of inserting
personal projects into the budget in the guise of constituency projects
has ensured that parliamentarians not only infringe the constitutional
culture of budgets but corrupt it for their personal interest by
initiating dubious, self serving interests and going further to directly
and indirectly execute such projects and making most illicit capital of
it. This is the anomaly of constituency projects that has endured for a
very long time and had drained the country by appeasing the corrupt
tendencies of legislators, now fondly called legislooters, in deference to
their insatiable crave for illicit emoluments. This has ensured that
Nigerian budgets, before the coming of Buhari, has largely been shared
between corrupt and hawkish parliamentarians and an equally corrupt,
acquiescing and wheeling-dealing executive. In the sequel, Nigerians, for
whose interests budgets are supposedly made, had been left high and dry.
This was one of the cultures the change agenda targets and which was why
we saw the drama that attended this year’s budget as the old rugged
culture clashed with the determination of the Buhari regime to change this
culture for the betterment of the Nigerian masses.
In the present Abdulmuminu Jubrin versus Yakubu Dogara et al dirty
slugfest over the padding of the 2016 budget, let us know that we are not
dealing with a new culture but an old culture that has long endured but is
being threatened by change. Poor Dogara, Jubrin and their fellow
legislators, they read badly of the change for which Nigerians endured
massive onslaughts to bring in last year. They are rugged students of the
old order that came to a head on collision with President Buhari’s
unsmiling commitment to cap the wellhead of corruption and free hitherto
stolen funds to attend to the country’s many challenges. We are having the
open sesame happening presently because we voted for change otherwise, the
rotten order of the executive and the legislature colluding to share the
yearly budgets would have passed quietly as it has been before Buhari
came. So budget padding either by soiled civil servants planting and
inflating budget heads for their selfish interests, corrupt ministers and
politicians, appropriating all for their selfish benefits or by
supercilious parliamentarians, inserting various dubious interests into
the budget in the guise of constituency projects, is not new. In fact, it
has been an old corrupt culture. What is new is that change is
unravelling it and opening its behind for Nigerians to know why they have
been so short changed.
In the present squabble, let us recall that the President presented his
executive’s budget estimates to the legislature and let us recall that
when the legislature returned the approved budget to the executive, the
Buhari government refused to sign, raising serious charges that most of
the proposals it sent to the legislature, were deleted and replaced with
various doubtful insertions that never emanated from the executives as it
should be. Let us recall that Dogara et al and Jubrin were in the same
boat, frantically denying such charge and alleging the executives rather
did not present the budget well and that they did a damn good job
cleansing what Jubrin said was a badly presented budget. They were
together in defending the legislature even when it was obvious that
critical projects proposed by the executive, such as the Calabar-Lagos
rail line were expunged from the budget and replaced with so-called
constituency projects that were not proposed by the executive. It was
based on such inconsistencies that the President refused to sign the
budget and had to take it back to the parliament. Let us recall that
Jubrin in particular was so vociferous defending the legislature and
accusing the executive of multifarious offences and going further and
threatening fire and brimstone should the President refuse to sign the
budget.
So when did the cookie crumble in the relationship between Jubrin and
Dogara and co such that they are washing very dirty and messy linens in
the public? When did Jubrin now realise that Dogara inserted many projects
in the budget to support an offence he had so frantically denied in the
recent past? When did it occur to Dogara that Jubrin took over the budget
process to steal in his fancy projects into the budget? When did it occur
to both Jubrin and Dogara that indeed the House of Representatives
mutilated the budget to the extent of inserting billions of Naira worth
illegal projects in the budget? These are just a few critical questions
that dog the present admission from the horses’ mouth that indeed the
House of Representatives leadership altered the budget and some members
inserted dubious items in the budget to defraud the country. We must thank
God for this change when we review what is happening in the House of
Representatives at moment. We must see reason to thank God that one of the
old corrupt orders that have so robbed the country is on the verge of
tumbling down today because the rays of change beamed on it and Nigerian
officialdom will not be the same again.
So let Jubrin and Dogara et al fight on. Let all the dirty details of the
same shenanigans with which past governments and politicians have robbed
the country continue to flip open for Nigerians to know where indeed the
rain started beating them. Let the fight get messier because this will
reveal messier details of why we are where we are today and most
especially ensure that we don’t continue threading the same paths that
have so destroyed the country for the last five years.
Peter Claver Oparah
Ikeja, Lagos.
E-mail: [email protected]
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