Our meeting with Acting President is to bridge the gaps on budget process – Lawan

The Leader of the Senate, Senator Ahmad Lawan (APC-Yobe) in this interview with KEHINDE AKINTOLA, reflects on the ongoing efforts to fast-track the passage of the 2017 Budget; who controls the power of the purse; the Executive-Legislature relations, among other issues. Excerpts:
Distinguished Senate President, Nigerians are still worried about the controversy over the 2016 Budget, because we have been seeing inconsistencies already cropping up in 2017 Budget estimate. What is happening?
I will disagree with you if you describe the issue as inconsistencies in the 2017 Appropriation Bill. Let me say that there’s not going to be any perfect Appropriation Bill as submitted by the Executive because that is simply a compendium of estimates, a proposal to the Legislature and the Legislature is at liberty to consider the presented Appropriation Bill to give it the very necessary Legislative intervention that is required. That is to say that we must ensure that the spread of projects are equitable, the costing of items and so many other things and of course, the needs for such projects to spread to various parts of the country. Naturally, it’s not like a perfect document in fact, it can’t be even near perfect, it’s simply the wish of the Executive for the country.
Therefore, it will come as a document that requires our intervention that is why in the first place, it was presented to the Legislature. In 2016 unfortunately, there were so many mix-ups. So much mistakes in my opinion and I will like to liken the incidence of 2016 to the learning process. I will say that the Executive was a team of entirely new people. Almost everyone on that side was new. Therefore, they had their own challenges naturally. On what to present and how to present it. The Legislature too at that point had a lot of new people therefore some of the issues that ordinarily should not be on the surface came up to the surface. That means that, there were something that should have been attended to and dealt with in a better way without making them public but they happened because everybody was learning especially because everybody on the other side were learning. However, 2017 gives opportunity for us to learn from our mistakes of 2016. For the Legislature, I want to say kudos to the National Assembly especially the Senate because after the incident of 2016, the Senate President in consultation with the leadership of the Senate and indeed the entire Senate came up with a team, technical in nature to address the kind of issue that arose in the 2016 Appropriation bill processing. That is to say, that some kind of reforms on how the National Assembly will treat the 2017 Appropriation Bill. And you could see very novel ideas like, one, having a public hearing on the Appropriation Bill itself, that was never done before. That was done in early Februar
But when the MDAs came to defend the budget, there were issues of some ministers denying some overheads?
No, let me land, the Senate in collaboration with the House of Representatives organised the public hearing which I’m sure you participated and covered, gave more stakeholders the opportunity to participate because this is citizens’ opportunity and to some extent responsibility to participate in this kind of process. That was a very good development in our budgeting process. But we also suspended plenary sitting for three weeks initially and that was to give the standing committees in the Senate and indeed even the House did it concurrently that was to give our committees the opportunity to focus specifically on budget defence. And for the MDAs, majority of them came but after we resumed plenary, there were still some MDAs that have not defended their budgets and consequently we have to suspend plenary on Wednesday to enable the committees and the MDAs to interface and deal with the issues. In fact, we have reports at the meeting of Committee chairmen of the Senate and the Senate leadership to take reports of standing committees on what happened within the three weeks. Some committees reported that there are MDAs or Ministers who failed to appear or attend the budget defence and the Senate President gave them the opportunity, those MDAs, the Ministers and chief executive officers of various MDAs to appear between Wednesday last week and Tuesday this week. And that in our hope, will give us the opportunity to wrap-up the budget defence so that we keep with our programme of ensuring that we pass the budget by the second week of March by the grace of God.
In addition to all these, the Senate and the House leadership met with the Acting President about two times on the Appropriation Bill. You know this interface and synergy provided opportunity for the Executive and Legislature to narrow the gap because most of the issues that arose in 2016 Appropriation Bill processing were issues that could have been handled if there were better synergy between the Executive and Legislature. May be because of the wide gap, I think some of the issues became unnecessarily controversial but this time around, the leadership of the National Assembly has very close discussion, continuous discussion with the Executive side of government. And last week, the leadership of the Senate and the House of Representatives held a meeting jointly with the Acting President and present at the meeting were key and relevant Ministers including the Minister of Budget and National Planning and of course, the Minister of Finance.
On the issue you are talking about, some issues were addressed because the Senate raised those issues. Of course, the National Assembly led by the Chairman of the National Assembly and the Senate President raised those issues of some Ministers not appearing and some projects that were included in 2016 and were even awarded in the 2016 budget but were not reflected in the 2017 Appropriation Bill and to our understanding, that means they are already enjoying the effect of abandoned projects because if they can’t be continued in 2017 and they are not to be completed in 2016, then they will be abandoned and some other issues and those issues were thrashed and properly addressed. The Minister of National Planning and Budget addressed some of the issues and said there were no inconsistencies and we were satisfied with the explanation that he gave. So I believe we have done quite a lot and significantly that there’s no unnecessary controversy in the processing of this budget, that we are able to do what we suppose to do and do it in a good time, to ensure that the budget is implementable and serve the purpose for which it was initiated in the first place.
Sir, depsite of all you said, there are some people who believe there are certain frivolities in the budget that appeared in the previous budget like buying 100 computers on yearly basis, among others. So when are we going to see the last of such duplication of projects?
You see, it depends on who’s talking. If the Executive feels they have a case to include certain things in the budget, this is their opinion. This is the way they judge, this is the way they look at issues, that these are necessary for them but the public has the opportunity to attend the public hearing organised by the National Assembly on the Appropriation Bill to air their views and some did. Some of the people in attendance raised the issues on computers and others. I can tell you that the National Assembly Committees and the National Assembly as a whole will not pass this budget without proper scrutiny and take into account the public views on some of these issues. We are here because some people wanted us to be here by the grace of God. We are here for the sake of the people not for ourselves and not the Executive arm of government. So we will continue to do what would be in the best interest of our people in the country. We will continue to do what is in the national interest of the development of Nigeria. Though we are not going to be unmindful not those observations by people outside and indeed our colleagues. When our colleagues said these are really issues as far as we are concerned, they may not be issues on the other side of the Executive because they don’t see it that way. Just as I was saying at the beginning, it depends on who is talking. What they may consider as fundamental or as primary or central or core may not be necessarily considered core or fundamental. We may think these are frivolities and can dispense with them. So I believe that at the end of the day, we will come up with a budget that will be in the best interest of Nigeria and our people.
Moving forward, don’t you see the need for Legislature and Executive to interface in the course of preparing the budget to mitigate the areas of disagreement?
You know this is not a parliamentary system of government. In our system here we have separation of powers, it’s in the parliamentary system where ministers at also members of parliament. Therefore, that kind of situation could always be managed but here I believe there’s always some interface with the Executive.  The ministers and the relevant Committees meet but that interface will never replace the budget defence because they have the latitude as separate arm of government to think through what they want to achieve for the country or for various sectors that the ministers handle. Even if the National Assembly suggests that, ‘No you shouldn’t do this, you should do that,’ at a point there will be disagreements because our perspectives are different. So there will always be that need to come to the budget defence. You know this is a very dynamic situation, the thoughts of the Legislature could be slightly different and could be shaped by certain events and because we are also closer to the public. I used the word closer in a very responsible and serious sense. You wake up in the morning, you meet the people from your Constituency, some are not even from your Constituency, in your house. You went to shop, you meet people and they will tell you that these are the things they think we should do, why are you not doing these ones, or you come to the office, people will be there, some to suggest, some to complain and so on and so forth. So the Legislator is on daily basis in touch or we go back to our Constituencies and people tell us. Sometimes you don’t need to be told, you see the situation that requires your attention. So our perspectives will naturally differ from most of the people from the other side of the government who may not be really so exposed to these kind of experiences, therefore when they sit down they also understand some of these issues.