Concern over anticipatory approvals

Once again, there is deserved focus on the money trail on security expenditure by the Federal Government. While it is true that the Muhammadu Buhari government named security as one of its cardinal programmes, the question increasingly arises. Are we more secure or less secure now than we were in May 2015? Are we getting value for the humungous sums that have gone into security spending?
There is the additional matter of process and procedure. The Federal Government in pursuing expenditure on security has evidently ignored procedures and processes. Why the rush? In whose interest is it to rubbish established procedures with security spending as rationale?
It has since come out that President Muhammadu Buhari breached procedures in granting anticipatory approvals for payment of huge sums of money in the name of security. One was the payment of $469m from the Excess Crude Account to buy 12 Super Tucano aircraft from the United States government. The sum is in addition to the release of $1billion also from the Excess Crude Account following the consent of the Governors.
There are many problems with the process and the actions.
For one, funds in the Excess Crude Account are not directly available to the Federal Government to draw upon at a whim or a decision of the executive arm. They belong to the Federation, being all the federating units of states, local governments and the federal government. The established procedure is for all funds to get legislative approval, meaning the representatives of the people endorse the expenditure.
The Excess Crude Account came into being in 2004 as a proactive measure to save oil revenues above a base amount based on benchmark oil prices. The account seeks to protect the budgets against shortfalls due to fluctuating oil prices. The goal was to delink government expenditures from oil revenues thereby insulating the economy from external shocks.
The ECA grew up to $20 billion by November 2008, representing a third of Nigeria’s external reserves then. But by June 2010, the account had less than $4billion due to budget deficits at all levels of government and the steep drop in oil prices. Demands by the Nigerian Governors Forum for release of the saved funds ensured that it reduced further to barely $1 billion by the end of the Goodluck Jonathan administration. It has since risen to over $2billion.
Divvying up the Excess Crude Account gave the governors additional political leverage and funds. There are hardly any traces of the funds in the states in terms of infrastructure or visible expenditure, the original arguments they made for insisting on release of the funds. Now the Governors are similarly in the forefront of pushing the Buhari government to draw freely from the ECA and spend the money.
Second is the wrong procedure the Federal Government has adopted in taking the money. The President has written to the National Assembly after the fact to approve the expenditure by inserting it into the yet-to-be-approved 2018 budget. Wrong process that leaves a foul smell.
There is yet another concern. Expenditure on security since 2015 is becoming curiouser and curiouser. Citizens are bemused as there are inadequate or no explanations for some of the actions.
Take the matter of the $1billion. When the Federal Government first spoke of it, the claim was that it would be deployed to defeat Boko Haram. This was strange, to say the least, because for nearly a year before then the same Federal Government insisted that it had “technically defeated” Boko Haram. Why would you need such a huge sum of money representing a significant fraction of the 2018 budget, just to fight a defeated army?
The sum of $1billion in the open market translates to about N365b or N305b at official rates. It means an expenditure of N1billion daily on this fight. Note that this is extra-budgetary spending aside from the provisions in the Defence budget. The budget provides N567billion for Defence. The defence budget expressly provides for the purchase of small boats, tugs and helicopters. Then before the approval of the same budget by the National Assembly, the Government releases $469m for buying the same helicopters.
It does not make sense. Too many things do not add up in the expenditure on defence. As we noted with the case of the abduction of the Dapchi girls, on the matter of our defence it would seem that too much money is available. The more money that the government makes available, it appears, the more money that it needs to conduct this war. On the other side, the more money available, the more unending the war seems to become. Remember this was a war the Government assured us that a Government headed by a general would quickly bring to an end. It is not happening.
There is too much that is unseen and unknown. Please cap the expenditure on security or make it more accountable.