Controversial provisions of 2014 Appropriation Bill to avoid

The 2014 Appropriation Bill contained numerous controversial provisions that compelled the Ministry of Finance to formally recall the version which the executive submitted to the lawmakers in December 2013.

The provisions for intangible assets in the 2014 budget amounted to N480 billion comprising provisions of over N47 billion by 76 individual ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) and N433 billion in the service-wide vote. Analysts observed at the time that earmarking such huge amount for patents in one year was untidy and worrisome.

Other strange items in the service-wide vote included the provision of N21 billion for elections logistics support to Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) despite the increase in the commission’s expenditure from the N32 billion provisioned in 2013 to N45 billion, ostensibly to enable it intensify preparations towards the 2015 elections.

Also questionable was the provision of N150 million for a yearly verification exercise for pensioners, which analysts considered unnecessary since the country had acquired infrastructure for biometric data capture. The verification exercise had often attracted strong condemnation by pensioners and their families.

Also, the sum of N33.6 billion was allocated to salaries and wages while another provision of N33.7 billion was made for allowances. This was apart from the N84.4 billion provided for allowances and social contributions. Another N28.8 billion was to be spent on non-regular allowances, further pushing up the cost of governance in the country.

Furthermore, despite the provision for budget preparation and monitoring in the allocation to the Budget Office of the Federation to the tune of N70,792,232, the MDAs continued to make provision for budget the same purpose. Scrutiny of the budget proposals showed that over N100 million was allocated by government agencies for budget preparation alone, and the presidency had proposed N6,925,234 for that purpose. Other allocations for budget preparation included Border Communities Development Agency (N1,890,090) and National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru (N7,445,656), while the Ministry of Aviation proposed N15,874,157 for the same purpose.

Even federal colleges proposed hundreds of thousands for the same activity, despite the parent ministry, Education, having proposed N15 million for budget preparation and monitoring. The National Mathematical Centre (NMC), Sheda, made plans to spend a total of N2.12 million to maintain and fuel aircraft, sea boats and railway equipment which it did not have. The centre planned to spend N509,216, N429,056 and N465,522 on the maintenance of aircraft, sea boats and railway equipment, respectively, while there were additional allocations of N293,974 and N421,224 on fuelling of aircraft and sea boats, respectively.

Curiously, budgetary allocation for purchase, fuelling and maintenance of power generating sets by the MDAs in the 2014 budget remained as high as N5.8 billion despite the successful privatisation of the power generation and distribution companies by the Federal Government.

Clearly, the budget is full of distortions. In some areas, items are simply restated verbatim several times and amounts allocated as many times as they are repeated. In the Ministry of Education, some university budgets are simply restated. In one case a university budget is simply re-pasted as another university budget.

Also, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs budget, there were plans to spend N834.4 million to purchase and freight 40 ‘representational cars’ to 40 of our foreign missions. This translates to N20.86 million as average cost for the cars. In the same ministry, there were provisions for office equipment repeated five times and several allocations made for the same item repeatedly.

The distortion is compounded by the fact that provisions are made for the same purpose but captured using other framing. In other cases items are included that are not measurable or executable. For instance, the Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution will be spending N9 million for ‘building democracy as an instrument of peace’.

It was in response to criticisms that the Finance Ministry took the embarrassing step of recalling the earlier version of the budget, citing “some symmetric errors discovered in the earlier document”. The ministry also said at the time that the replacement of the document was necessary to have an implementable one for the legislature to work on.

The Budget Office attributed the errors to a mix-up arising from the use of the Government Integrated Financial and Management Information System (GIFMIS) which was deployed for the first time in preparing the budget.

Whatever the cause of the errors, we observe that these types of errors and controversial provisions are some of the reasons for the high budget figures we record on a yearly basis. We therefore demand that Nigerians and their friends be spared the agony of having to deal with such errors, going forward, beginning with the 2015 budget.