The struggle for a return to democracy which dominated the polity in the late 1980s and the 1990s foreshadowed a better Nigeria anchored on transparent government and the wellbeing of the people. Campaigns against military rule then gained popularity as more people became politically conscious and resisted the repression of the autocratic governments. The hope that participatory democracy and political freedom would bring about the fulfilment of the aspirations of the common people generated the political interests that finally brought to an abrupt end the streak of undemocratic regimes.
Successive military regimes had at assumption of power cited the wanton looting of public treasury by the politicians as their reasons for taking-over. They took their turns to highlight the problem of corruption and lack of patriotism as widespread and said it needed to be tamed through marshal force. What looked like a revolutionary move to restore the country to its glorious past, turned out to be a system of corruption and a tool for further impoverishment of the people.
Nigerians are grateful that they are free from the shackles of dictatorship and in their own volition put in place a democratic system which they hoped would ultimately bring back the golden age of prosperity and true human and infrastructural development. This process has been on for the past 12 years and Nigerians are still as apprehensive as they were.
In retrospect, there are reasons to believe that not much has been achieved in the area of developing the human capacity and economic wellbeing of the Nigerian people when weighed against the unprecedented prosperity that has been witnessed in terms of accruable revenues, particularly from crude sales.
According to available statistics, between 1999 and 2010, Nigeria made over N31trn from crude oil revenues alone. The revenue formed the basis for annual budgets in the last 10 years. While huge sums, in trillions were budgeted yearly and approved by the National Assembly, Nigerians who largely live in the rural areas of the country are hardly feeling the impact of the megabucks expectedly trickling down from the centre.
What has been draining these funds? The Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Mallam Lamido Sanusi, provided a clue when he appeared before the Senate in December, 2010 to defend his comments on the overhead of the legislature. Sanusi, said, “Total government overhead is N536.268bn. Total overhead of the National Assembly is N136. 259bn, which is exactly 25.1 per cent of Federal Government overhead. The overhead of the National Assembly as a percentage of the Federal Government budget in 2009 was 19. 87 and in 2008 was 14.19.”
In 2011, the Federal Government will be spending N2.425trn on recurrent expenditure as against the N1.146trn for capital expenditure. The budget itself paints the picture of how the priority of government focuses more on the sustenance of the machinery of governance rather than improving the lives of the people.
Sanusi’s flaks against the National Assembly combine with revelations of illegal allowances being allocated to themselves by the lawmakers to draw the attention of the public to the entrenched profligacy in government.
Although members of the National Assembly had dwelt in denials since the eruption of public outrage against them, the admittance by the President of the Senate, David Mark, that the cost of governance was too high, gave credence to the campaigns for a cut in what goes to the members of the National Assembly.
Mark’s rendition on the matter is that the question of high cost of governance is not peculiar to the National Assembly. He believes that the executive and the judiciary are even more culpable and the searchlight of the discerning public should now be beamed beyond the legislature on the other arms of government.
Responding after the presentation of the 2010 budget by President Goodluck Jonathan at a joint session of the two chambers, Mark said, “Related to this, is the unacceptable disproportionate ratio of recurrent and overhead expenditure to capital expenditure. No nation desirous of meaningful development can afford such a disproportionate allocation of its financial resources between consumption and investment towards its own future development. This means that the cost of running government has been increasing at an unsustainable rate. We must all rise together and address it.”
At the time, Mark promised that the Senate would take the lead in ensuring that the recurrent expenditure of government across board was cut to a reasonable size. He said, “The National Assembly in the discharge of its responsibilities, will, from the 2011 Appropriation Bill re-evaluate these budget aggregates and other major macroeconomic variables across the board for all government MDAs and other arms of government to lower the personnel and overhead expenditures, and improve the level of appropriations for capital expenditure.”
But when the 2011 budget was submitted and passed by the National Assembly, this promise was not taken into account. Jonathan had submitted a budget with a statutory transfer crediting the National Assembly with N120bn. But when the budget was passed, the amount hit N232.73bn. It took another amendment to the budget to bring the amount to N150bn.
It appears that this amendment, which was at the behest of President Jonathan, is what the National Assembly now accepts as a cut in its allocation in line with its promise to reduce the cost of governance across the agencies. It is well known that the President had to force the amendment to the Appropriation Bill 2011, when he refused to sign it after considering it as non-executable due to the increases made to it.
Former Senate Deputy Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba, said the Senate had already reduced its overhead cost by 40 per cent as promised by the President of the Senate. According to him, the amendment to the budget saw to the reduction of the running cost due to the National Assembly, and that is good enough to entrench prudence in legislative businesses.
While addressing members of the Nigerian Bar Association recently in Abuja, Ndoma-Egba also reiterated the need to extend the searchlight on the jumbo pay to the judiciary and other agencies. He argued that while it was true that the cost of governance was too high and needed to be reduced drastically, the National Assembly should not be used as a scapegoat.