Time to End Opaque Budgeting is Now

An editorial by The Guardian Following widespread padding in the 2022 National Budget by Federal lawmakers, there came bursts of outcry for a change in the budgeting process. Thus, the National Assembly agreed that by 2023 they will abolish the current envelop system of budgeting, which is opaque. This opaque budgeting results in the capping of funds notwithstanding the needs of a government ministry, department or agency. Instead, it would be replaced by the programme- based budgeting. Otherwise called Line, Item or Incremental budgeting, the opaque system of budgeting has for several years been receiving bashing from economists who described as archaic. Whereas, many countries have abandoned the opaque budgeting system in place of the programme based, Nigeria continued to practice it despite that it had done nothing to improve the economy or the lives of the Nigerian people. Under the arrangement, National Assembly members say there is an absence of a coherent and systematic of exerting legislative control over fiscal decisions and priorities of the Federal Government. Since we still have 10 months more to get to 2023, legislators should start programme based budgeting from now. Moreover, while signing the 2022 budget, President Mohammed Buhari complained saying: “I must express my reservations about many of the changes that the National Assembly has made to the 2022 Executive Budget proposal,” going ahead to enumerate, “some of the worrisome changes, the 2022 budget that I just signed into law provides for aggregate expenditures of N17.127 trillion, an increase of N735.85 billion over the initial Executive proposal for a total expenditure of N16.391 trillion.” Buhari further complained that “provisions made for as many as 10,733 projects were reduced while 6, 576 new projects were introduced into the budget by the National Assembly.” But the National Assembly members who worked on the Appropriation Bill before the Presidential assent promptly rebutted the Presidential allegations of budget padding or distortions, insisting that all the Legislature did to the Bill was the needful and within their legislative oversight. However, the import of these Executive/Legislative altercations is the stillbirth that the 2022 Appropriation Act has become. This much is implied in the President’s closing remarks when, short of withholding assent, he pointedly announced his supplementary budget, soon to be sent to the National Assembly. Apparently, this is to return to square one in the making of a truly acceptable 2022 Budget. Thus, the signing of the 2022 Appropriation Act was a mere ritual which, in the words of the President, was to sustain a predictable January to December fiscal year, as provided for in the Constitution. And this is the onset of the orphaning of the 2022 Budget and indicative of an economy still lost in the woods. As we await Buhari’s supplementary budget, it is appropriate for the federal lawmakers prepare for the adoption of the new budgeting system. With the key managers of the economy joining The 2022 Committee to create the Nigerian leader of their choice for 2023, we warn that opaque budgeting is an avenue to perpetrate corruption, budget padding and the like and that this is the right time it should be abandoned. This time 92 percent of our budget goes for debt servicing isn’t the time to continue with wasteful spending. This is the time to allow our budgets reflect reality. The dire straits of our economy and our indebtedness make it impolitic to divert trader money being handled by the Bank of Industry to the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs. This is the time to curtail our penchant for spending wastefully. It is unrealistic for us to invent our way of doing things when we have no history of inventiveness. We can only imitate, and we should do so within reason. Legislators are expected to have their input in every budget not creating new projects without planning. Spending money without recourse to evaluation isn’t part of project management. We have members of the Commonwealth of Nations and North America to imitate. Budgets that are realistic and implementable are the way. Programme based budget system is in vogue, let us embrace it with alacrity.