The Senate recently came under fire over the plan to allocate 20 per cent of the national budget (N1.4tn) to constituency projects. The Senate had approved for further legislative examination, a bill seeking to reserve 20 per cent of annual budgets for its members to execute constituency projects exclusive of the executive arm of government. Going by the projected budget of N7.2tn for 2017, the lawmakers would get the sum of N1.4tn allocation for constituency projects. The proposal naturally attracted condemnations by Nigerians from all walks of life.
For instance, speaking with a national daily, Dr. Junaid Mohammed, a member of the House of Representatives during the Second Republic, said: “It (the law) is not only unfair, it is also utterly irresponsible. It is a violation of all the Revenue Expenditure and Finance Act we have inherited from the British and the ones we inherited from the first, second, third, fourth, up to the current republic. It cannot be justified by constitution; it cannot be justified by the law they are trying to enact. The executive will do well to ignore such a law because it cannot be justified by our Constitution. It is ultra vires to our Constitution and any known law of decency. The idea that the National Assembly should initiate all matters pertaining to budget and fiscal responsibility is something I find untenable and I am yet to be persuaded.”
In our view, the exclusive focus on the members of the National Assembly while excoriating constituency projects derives from a severely restricted view of the workings of governance in the country. As we noted in our previous editorials, there is nothing basically wrong with the idea of constituency projects. Members of the National Assembly, who were elected by the majority of Nigerians to legislate for their good, are at liberty to incorporate projects that have a bearing on the lives of their constituents into the budget submitted by the executive. In the advanced democracies, lawmakers get elected on the basis of the promises they made to their constituents regarding attracting developmental projects to their constituencies, particularly as the power of appropriation lies with the legislature. This is the way in which the lawmakers are expected to impact positively on their communities.
Although it is the executive that initiates most of the projects captured in a budget, there is no doubt that it cannot capture all the salient needs of the voting populace, which is why projects proposed by the legislature are expected to complement those submitted by the executive, within certain specified limits, and with the active collaboration of both parties in the overall national interest.
What is fundamentally wrong with the Nigerian system, however, is that the term “constituency projects” has become, since the return to civil rule in 1999, nothing more than a cover term for corruption, embarked upon by the legislature with the active collaboration of the executive. It is therefore necessary to jettison the view that constituency projects are merely activities embarked upon by the legislature to harass or intimidate the executive into submission. If anything, members of the executive play a more active role in the sustenance of the constituency projects facade than the lawmakers.
When projects are proposed by the legislature, the ideal thing is for the members of the legislature to leave their execution strictly to the executive. They are not expected to be given money to execute the projects themselves, propose contractors, or get kickbacks from the contract sum. Sadly, all of these anomalies occur in Nigeria on a yearly basis, and no solution appears to be in sight, in spite of the avowed anti-corruption posture of the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration. The lawmakers are actively involved in nominating contractors for the so-called projects, working out a corrupt arrangement with the minister in charge of the particular ministry where the project is to be executed.
In most cases, outrageous sums get budgeted for the project(s), while the proceeds are shared out among the minister, the benefiting lawmaker and the contractors, if any. Thus, the current debate about the National Assembly getting 20 per cent of the proposed budget expenditure for 2017, while not without merit, does not capture the real issues associated with constituency projects in the country. The nation must beam its searchlight on the executive, because it is the ministers that release money for such projects.
Given the foregoing, we call on the Senate to suspend action on the proposed bill, and organise public hearings across the country where members of the public will make their views known on the proposed law.