Budget impasse: Why Yar’Adua is angry - Senators, Reps brace up for battle

Taiwo Adisa, Abuja - 06.04.2008

Disagreements over the year 2008 budget may not end soon as sources in the Presidency have said that the impasse may not be resolved earlier than June. There are also reports that the leadership of the National Assembly is warming up for its first major battle with the presidency.

With the resolution of the initial controversy over the whereabouts of the budget, following the admission by the Presidency that it is now in possession of the money bill, it was expected that President Umaru Yar’Adua would finally give his assent to the budget document on Thursday but he did nothing of such.

Rather, presidency sources claimed that the President was studying the budget. But at the same time, the sources claimed that the President is very angry with the budget prepared by the National Assembly and may not give his assent.

The contention among the President’s kitchen cabinet is that the National Assembly went too far in tampering with the budget estimates he submitted last November, thus rendering all the projections of the administration useless.

It was gathered that rather than start counting the 30 days he needed for his assent from March 19 when the reworked budget was sent to him, President Umaru Yar’Adua has started counting from March 28, the date a staff of the presidency signed for volume 1 & 2 containing details of the 2008 budget.

If that is the case, the National Assembly may have to wait till the end of April before hearing from the President. The legislators would only be in a position to do anything to the budget from May, when they would also be preparing for their terminal break.

A source knowledgeable about the impasse said: “The way things are going, we may not have the budget till the end of June. The Presidency is not going to feel it, since it doesn’t have any new projects. It is the National Assembly that has new projects which maysuffer as a result of the delay in passing the budget.

“We have also looked through the budget and discovered that most ministries are going to continue with the ongoing projects, so we are operating on the 2007 projections, that is why the capital votes have been released to the Ministries.”

It was gathered that the President is angry that the National Assembly went into the issue of allocating resources directly to ministries and projects.

“We believe that the President is the one who is granted the power to execute projects. He cannot execute projects he has not thought about, that is why he is expected by the constitution to submit budget estimates to the National Assembly.

The duty of the National Assembly is to appropriate for the sectors enumerated by the President. But when the NationalAssembly goes beyond appropriation for the sectors, to actual allocation of resources to specific projects, then they have gone beyond the constitutional bound,” a presidency source said.

The source added that the areas of differences are not only many but wide apart. “It is like we have agreed to do roads, and they now come and say don’t do roads, provide water, not with equal amount of money but with some big sums that will not just correlate with our fiscal projections.

“What the president expects is that if he submits proposal for 30 roads at a certain sum, they can query the amount devoted to the roads and the number and we find a meeting point,” the source said.

Although the Leaders of the National Assembly were said to be warming up to meet the President over the delay in signing the budget, a National Assembly source told the Sunday Tribune that the impasse is being orchestrated by lack of strong party leaders.

“If we have strong party leaders, the crisis cannot last. It should not be difficult for the leaders to find a meeting point so that the people will not continue to suffer,” the source stated.

The National Assembly and the presidency are disagreeing over the N2.7 trillion budget passed by the National Assembly in March after it scaled down the initial budget passed on February 20 which figures stood at N2.89 trillion.

Despite the decision of the lawmakers to reduce the budget by N150 billion after Yar’Adua raised eight objections to the original budget, the President again objected to signing the budget which he said did not contain the detailed breakdown.

The National Assembly through the Acting Clerk to the Assembly, Mr. Yemi Ogunyomi , had on March 28 forwarded a clean copy of the budget details to the presidency after the leaders of the two chambers have agreed to that.

But there was another round of controversy as to when the president received the budget. A source in the Presidency said that the budget details were actually signed for on March 28 but that there is a procedure between the office of the Special Adviser and the President. He said that the President had the budget on his table late on Tuesday, April 2.

Some of the items the president had objected to in the budget included the inclusion of N18 billion for the Federal Emergency Road Management Agency (FERMA), the increases made to the recurrent expenditure of the National Assembly.

The President had in his letter of February 22, rejecting the original budget passed by the two chambers of the Assembly, also questioned the increment in the recurrent allocation to the Defence Forces amounting to N26. 164 billion. He said this should be adjusted to N22.198 billion.

He also questioned what he called the 78 percent increment in the votes of the National Assembly. The President said: “While appreciating the reasons for some increase, especially due to the effort that no National Assembly Committee seeks financial assistance of any MDA before embarking on any oversight function, I still believe that an increase of of 78 per cent is far too high. In this respect, I would like to advise that the overall increase is kept to no more than 20 per cent.”

He asked that N18 billion included in allocation to FERMA, be removed, the sum of N21 billion is added to the votes of Ministry of Transport.

The President also objected to the following increments made by the National Assembly, National Sports Commission (109 per cent) in recurrent votes, and 714 per cent in capital; Ministry of Justice 148 per cent) Code of Conduct Bureau (998 per cent) and the Police Service Commission (662 per cent) increase.

Many of the lawmakers who are set to resume on Tuesday April 8 have been badly hit by the delay in getting the president’s assent for the budget are said to be considering options to put an end to the impasse.

Ahead of the resumption, some have suggested that the leaders of the two chambers should get in touch with the President to ascertain what he wants to do with the budget.

The legislators are of the opinion that rather than continue to wait till the end of April when the President would have exhausted the 30-day limit he has on the budget, the whole matter can be made to end this week.

Said a Senator: “If our leaders are able to ascertain what the real anger of the President is, the two chambers can consider it as quickly as possible and if it is something we can deal with, we then get back to the President through the usual channel. Of course, in all these, we will be guided by the constitution.”

Another legislator said that if the complaints by the President are fundamental and genuine enough to warrant a revisit of the budget, the lawmakers will be prepared to do that, but if the complaints were such that arose from misinformation or misconception, the National Assembly will put the record straight for the President.

The only other option open to the legislators outside dialogue is to override the presidential veto and it was gathered that the lawmakers are being cautious in utilising that option.

“Veto would be the only available option if dialogue fails, but we will be cautious in using that as it might be the first time the National Assembly will get to that stage, in anyway, if there is no understanding, the Assembly would have no other option that to override the veto with the two-thirds majority,” a lawmaker said.