in the House of Representatives. LastTuesday, he moved the motion
which led to the House summoning the Minister of Finance, Mrs
Okonjo-Iweala, over the alarm she allegedly raised that the nation
could be shut down by September if the National Assembly refused to
pass President Goodluck Jonathan's 2013 Budget Amendment Proposal. In
this telephone interview, Osagie throws light on how the issue of
constituency projects remains the bone of contention in the current
face-off between the National Assembly and the Presidency.
What do you have to say about media reports that the current stand-off
between the Executive arm of governmentand the National Assembly over
the 2013 Budget arose due to the fact that the Presidency refused to
execute theconstituency projects in the Appropriation Act?
I am not surprised because the issue of constituency projects has been
the source of conflicts between both armsof government. I insist that
due to our level of developmentas a country, lawmakers better
understand the problems of the people. As such, we have every right to
insist that development projects must be executed. We have no
apologies to anybody for taking that position.
Our problem with the Executive stems from the undue tardiness that
they always exhibit in implementing capital projects in general; not
just constituency projects. Apart from constituency projects, which
constitute less than 20 %of the approved capital expenditure of the
budget, there are so many other capital projects that were initiated
by the Executive arm itself which they are not executing. It was only
recently that the Federal Ministry of Works has been seen everywhere
trying to look at the roads.
What about the other sectors like health, education and power? The
constituency projects are not just for members of the National
Assembly. They are projects meant for thedevelopment of our people.
The budget is not segmented asto say there is an aspect devoted to
only constituency projects. They are all capital projects introduced
into the budget by members of the National Assembly.
We know the problems confronting our people and they include lack of
basic amenities like electricity, potable water, good roads and
schools. During our electioneering campaigns, we made promises to
our people that we would provide these amenities to them when elected.
No Minister has ever visited the nooks and crannies of this country
to solicit for the support of the people during the electioneering
period. It is the legislators that visited every hamlet and village to
interact with the people. So weare properly placed to ask for
development projects for ourpeople.
But going by the letter President Goodluck Jonathan sent to the
National Assembly two weeks ago, which could be referred to as 2013
Budget Amendment proposal, he gavethe impression that the National
Assembly diverted funds from certain top priority capital projects
like the Lokoja-Abuja Highway, Kano-Maiduguri Highway and several
others like that. Can you give your perspective on that?
Let me also tell you that it is an anomaly to ask for an amendment to
an Appropriation Act. The best approach should have been for the
President to present a supplementary budget proposal. A supplementary
budget ismeant to address the revenue shortfall for a particular
project in a particular fiscal year. In order to address thisproblem,
the President ought to come with a supplementarybudget proposal to
make up for the projects that need to be executed. On the issue of
moving funds from one budget sub-head to another, only the Committee
on Appropriation can speak about that.
Even at that, what about the initial funds appropriated for various
capital budget heads? How much of those funds have been released?
If, for instance, you requested for N10,000 for a project, and only
N8,000 was appropriated, the question that needs to be asked first is
whether you have spent the initial N8,000 allocated for theproject?
The answer to that question is no. So, what theyought to have done is
to first utilize the funds that have been appropriated and then come
by way of supplementarybudget to ask for additional funds to cover
the ground thatneeds to be covered.
So, the idea of hiding under an amendment budget, to renew the entire
budget is unacceptable and is unknown toour constitution in terms of
budgeting. That is the problem on ground.
Even the Senate has said that given the nature of the so-called
amendment proposal which is so voluminous, it is unlikely that the
senators can consider it before embarking on vacation. Do you know
that the Executive asked for an additional N40 billion in the
amendment proposal they brought? So, what the Executive is trying to
do is to blackmail us and cite that as excuse for their failure to
implement the 2013 Budget.
How do you mean?
This is because most sectors of the economy are not working. Those who
are handling the economy are causingconfusion by giving the impression
that economic growth has no relationship with job creation and other
concrete indices of development.
Nigerians are being deceived about the state of the economy.
How can they say there is economic growth when the people cannot feed
or get jobs?
But there's SURE-P and they also claim to have data showing that
they've been creating jobs?
They said they are creating jobs here and there under theSubsidy
Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P). How many people do
you know who have secured jobs under the SURE-P ? You can't just
assemble 30 young unemployed people and pay them N10,000 and repeat
that in another three months and youcall that job creation.
The handlers of our economy think that Nigerians are foolswho don't
know what they are doing. The people cannot see the impact of what the
handlers of our economy are doing; it is not being felt despite all
the propaganda. That is why we in the National Assembly are saying "we
are no fools". If you say we have tampered with some of the budget
heads, we have the right to do so for good reasons.
They have not released the funds we appropriated for capital projects.
As a result of this, ministries, departmentsand agencies of government
(MDAs) are crying over non-release of funds to them.
What can you say was the reason for the slash in the recurrent
expenditure projections of the budget?
The Committee on Appropriation is working out the detailson that.
However, there was an issue pertaining to that which has been
confirmed by the Ministry of Finance. You may recall that after the
2013 Budget was passed by theNational Assembly, the Ministry of
Finance and the Officeof the Head of Service of the Federation came
out to tell Nigerians that they discovered over 450,000 ghost
workersin the civil service. But the salaries and allowances of those
ghost workers had already been appropriated for in the 2013 Budget.
What happened was that both personnel and overhead expenditure
proposals were unreasonable in most cases.
There are agencies which exist on paper but which are noton ground and
budgetary provisions were made for them.
Really?
So, if in an effort to exercise the role of acting as checks and
balances on the Executive, we decide that such agencies do not require
bloated allocations, you cannot blame us. It is left for them to come
forward with convincing arguments to tell us these are the total
statisticsof the work force they have. But when they who are making
the proposal to us telling us that they have ghost workers in the
service, it means they don't even know howmany actual workers they
have.
It is the same people that appropriate money for both realand ghost
workers. Until they are sure of how many workers they have in the
service, we cannot be certain if what we appropriated for workers
salaries is not even more than what is required.
The unnecessary alarm that the Minister of Finance, Dr (Mrs) Okonjo
Iweala, has raised was designed to blackmail and stampede the
National Assembly into doing what they want. It is for this reason
that we have said that the picture the Minister has painted about the
budget is not correct.
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