Pervasive corruption in our budget systems

A lot had been said on corruption in Nigeria. It is so pervasive that one may conclude that most Nigerians have been socialized to see corruption as a national pastime – a normal way of life. At the household level, for instance, it is not impossible to hear of many parents aiding their wards in examination malpractices, thereby contributing to this social malady. At other instances, it is not uncommon to see civil servants routinely demanding for kickbacks before they do the needful. More lamentably, evidence of pervasive corruption in every aspect of our daily life could lead to a the harsh conclusion that corruption is part of our society and our society is part of corruption.

In any case, the issue of corruption in our budget systems has been well documented as one critical factor hindering Nigeria’s development agenda for several decades. A lot of manipulations are associated with our budgeting process both at federal and state levels, ranging from ghost projects like the so called constituency projects, frivolous line items, wasteful expenditure, inflation of contracts and illegal virement. Budget line items are often inflated by adding unnecessary wasteful expenditure that would obviously come back to private pockets. In fact, evidence shows that budget padding, which has become somehow accepted as a tradition, is not a new phenomenon. Rather, it is part of a long standing culture of impunity transcending all arms of government, especially the executive and legislature. As such, illegalities in our budget systems appear to have been perfected as a result of pervasive corruption in the system across ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).

While budgeting is not limited to the public/government alone, our focus here is on the public expenditure/finance management. In recent years, civil society organisations (CSOs) working around budget advocacy work in Nigeria under the auspices of Citizens Wealth Platform (CWP) have documented frivolous and wasteful expenditure running into several billions of naira from annual federal budget documents. In 2016, for instance, a saving of about N50 billion was recommended just from six MDAs (Power, Interior, Communications, Information & Culture, Labour and Judiciary) budget out of about one trillion naira from their budgets sent to National Assembly.

The purpose of annual budgets will never be realised if the document is always laced with deliberate frivolities and wasteful expenditure meant to grease private pockets. The little spending that ought to have been beneficial to the people in terms of provision of much needed critical infrastructures, human capital development and pro poor social interventions often suffer from inadequate release of funds, uncompleted projects and outright abandonment! Excessive allocation of funds to non priority projects is detriment to provision of critical infrastructural development and human capital development in the country.

For how long are we to live with this deception? Yet our fiscal authorities from the executive and legislative arms of government have not demonstrated sufficient will to correct these abnormalities over the years. The budget office and the MDAs involved should stop deceiving us. We don’t believe they are not aware of the numerous, deliberately corrupt practices associated with our budget process such as inflation of project funds, line items repetition or duplications and other frivolities in the budgets brought before them. If they claim ignorance, perhaps some of them do not know their onions, which is not impossible since more often than not, we don’t employ people on merit but nepotism and favoritism. The time for laziness and laissez faire attitude should be over. They should be more effective and thorough in checking the details of the budget proposals submitted for their scrutiny. If they need more hands they should not hesitate to employ vibrant Nigerians who are ready to work. If they think their workers are too aged they should be free to go and rest while younger ones are recruited to reenergize the system.

The National Assembly must ensure that duplications are streamlined before any budget proposal is passed into law. Using different terms or phrases for the same project/ line item has become recurring events in our budget document. The Budget Office should stop MDAs from using different languages to describe the same project. For budget credibility, there is an acceptable margin of error beyond which repetitious line items or duplications would amount to deliberate inanity. This is the more reason the legislature must work in collaboration with CSOs across the country to help them track frivolous and wasteful expenditure in order to eliminate repetitious or duplication of line items, w. No doing so would be disastrous and amount to abetting corruption through waste of scarce public resources.

Here, another experience from our analysis of the 2016 Appropriation Act is illustrative. While N400 million was allocated for provision of “Water Supply Scheme in Kwara Central Senatorial District” with the Code no LNRB001016544 for instance; another line item with same budgetary provision and project description is given a different Code no LNRBDA09016547. Yet other line items with Code Nos.: LNRBDA09016546 and LNRBDA09016527 for “Rehabilitation and Expansion of Water Works in Kwara Central Senatorial District” and “Water Supply Scheme and Erosion Control in Kwara Central Senatorial District” were allocated N300million and N350 million respectively. These are just few instances of many deliberate duplications and repetition of line items in the 2016 Budget. To minimize these abnormalities, there is need to expand capacity for CSOs participation in budget process. Increased grassroots budget literacy will thus play catalytic role in reducing corruption in our budgeting process at all levels of governance in the country.

• Salman is of the Grassroots Development and Advocacy Centre, Ilorin, Kwara State.