Senate probes unspent funds in 2012 budget

IRKED by what it considers the poor performance of the Federal Government in 2012, the Senate plans to investigate and recover unspent votes for last year before the implementation of the 2013 budget.
The Upper Chamber of the National Assembly said only 40 per cent of the capital budget for last year was utilised.
Besides, former Vice President (Africa) of the World Bank, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, has described the squandering of $45 billion in the Foreign Reserve Account and $22 billion in Excess Crude Account by the two administrations of the late President Musa Yar’Adua and the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan after Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as “the most egregious” instance of Nigeria’s failure to make the right developmental choices.
She stated that Nigerians had lost dignity because of ravaging poverty arising from poor choices of the elite, corruption and lack of investment in education.
Disclosing the position of the Senate to journalists at the National Assembly before the Eid-el-Maulud break, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Ahmad Muhammad Maccido, said that the chamber would carry out a comprehensive oversight with a view to recovering all unspent funds.
He stated that so far, the Executive had not said anything about funds that were not utilised from the 2012 budget and that the Senate would not leave the matter in that manner.
“Well, in time past, there used to be issues of unspent funds in the budget but this year, so far, the Executive has not come with any figure or informed us that these are unspent funds for 2012. However, one thing I know is that we would be going out on our statutory oversight duty. Until such a time when we come back from such oversight duty, I would not be able to tell you anything about unspent funds because, normally, it is the Executive that comes up with its figure; to inform us that these are the unspent funds for the preceding year. If they don’t do that, we will go out on oversight and find out actually what has been spent and what has not been spent. That is when we will know but for now, there is no such figure.”
The lawmaker put the level of implementation of the capital budget for last year at 40 per cent, noting: “The precise percentage we were given was 40 per cent. When I say 40 per cent, I am referring to the capital expenditure; the capital budget. As you know, the recurrent budget, which encompasses the overheads, payment of salaries and allied matters, they are always implemented 100 per cent. Therefore, we discount that when we talk of budget implementation. We always talk of capital budget when we ask for the level of implementation. As far as the capital budget for 2012 is concerned, the implementation was not more than 40 per cent”, he said.
On the fate of the balance of the capital budget for last year, Maccido said: “That is exactly what we plan to find out now because as I told you earlier, unspent funds have not been brought to us. It has not been announced by anybody and we know that the capital budget has not been spent 100 per cent. We need to find that out. We are going out on oversight to find that out and rest assured, whatever we find out, we will tell Nigerians that this is where their monies are, or this is what has been done with their monies.”
He also explained why the Legislature tinkered with the $75 per barrel benchmark forwarded by the Executive in October, last year.
His words: “In as much as the budget is an economic document, we should also know that a little bit of politicking comes into it. However, the House of Representatives raised their oil benchmark to $80, while we at the Senate increased by just $3, bringing it to $78 from the original $75 brought by the Executive. This was as a result of the alarming figure we’ve always seen as budget deficit. We’ve always had the deficit in the budget and in the 2013 budget, we had over N1 trillion as deficit. So, based on the figure we saw as the deficit from the Executive, we sat down and decided that we had to do something because, honestly, that figure was quite alarming to us. We knew we had only one alternative; to raise the benchmark so that we can get funds to offset the deficit. That was the only reason we did that and if you look at the budget of 2013, we have reduced the deficit with the fund that has been saved from raising the oil benchmark. However, before then, it was the House which first raised its own to $80 and we settled for $78. We had to sit down again, at the committee level to deliberate on this issue comprehensively. After that, we went into executive sessions in both chambers and the Senate agreed that a committee should be raised for conferencing with the House of Representatives. It was at this conferencing that we agreed on a final figure of $79.”
The chairman disclosed that some measures had been worked out to ensure full implementation of the 2013 budget.
“This time around, the National Assembly, not just the Senate, sat down and deliberated on this issue of implementation and our leadership also deliberated at their own level and came back to us, giving us details and telling us that there is going to be comprehensive oversight this year by all the standing committees in the Legislature. They’ve told us how to go about this job. Each committee has been made to understand that they would be answerable to the Committee of the Whole in both houses. Every committee would be given a tentative time as to when they are expected to present reports of the oversight they have done. It’s this report that we will now compile and find out, which ministry is performing and which is not. We also plan to have a data bank that would give us an instant insight into the workings of the budget itself by the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). The final report may not be ready this year but I can assure you that it is going to be very comprehensive as it would tell us immediately which MDA is working and which is not. The data bank would definitely be collated this year; all you need do is to refer to it and find out who did what”, he disclosed.
The National Assembly passed a total budget of N4.97 trillion for 2013.
At the 42nd convocation lecture of the University of Nigeria, Ezekwesili noted that Nigeria had enjoyed five cycles of oil boom, lamenting, however, the failure to convert oil incomes to renewable assets through the training of human capital, development of other sectors or investment in foreign assets as other resource-rich countries did with their oil income.
The former minister said: “The present cycle of boom of the 2010s is, however, much more vexing than the other four that happened in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s. This is because we are still caught up in it and it is more egregious than the other periods in revealing that we learned absolutely nothing from the previous massive failures.”
She continued: “The squandering of the significant sum of $45 billion in foreign reserve account and another $22 billion in Excess Crude Account being direct savings from increased administration handed over to the successor government in 2007. Six years after the administration I served handed over such humongous national wealth to another one, most Nigerians but especially the poor continue to suffer the effects of failing public health and education systems as well as decrepit infrastructure and battered institutions. Resource wealth has tragically reduced your nation – my nation – to a mere parable of prodigality.”
She added: “Nothing undignifies nations and their citizens like self-inflicted failure. Our abundance of oil, people and geography should have worked favourably and placed us on the top echelons of the global economic ladder by now.”
Ezekwesili said that it was up to the younger generation to restore the dignity of Nigeria by making the right choices to lift the nation out of poverty. The former World Bank executive described Nigeria as “a paradox of the kind of wealth that breeds penury” noting “the trend of Nigeria’s population in poverty since 1980 to 2010 suggests that the more we earned from oil the larger the population of poor citizens.”
According to her, the figures of the poor in Nigeria grew from 17.1 million in 1980, 34.5 million in 1985, 39.2 million in 1992, 67.1 million in 1996, to 68.7 million in 2004 and 112.47 million in 2010.
According to her, the resurgence of entrepreneurial spirit based on hard work and sound education are critical factors to changing Nigeria. “For Nigeria’s dignity to be restored your generation must build a coalition of young entrepreneurial minds that are ready to ask and respond to the question, what does it take for nations to become rich? Throughout economic history, the factors that determine which nations became rich and improved the standard of living of their citizens read like a Dignity Treatise in that they all revolve around the choices that ordinary citizens made in defining the value constructs of their nation”, she asserted.
The 42nd convocation ceremonies of the University of Nigeria started yesterday with the Convocation Lecture and the Prize and Awards night for distinguished graduands. First degree holders, numbering 18,150, would receive their certificates today while higher degrees and honorary awards would be conferred on 1,730 recipients tomorrow.