KUNLE ODEREMI writes on the import of the 2012 Federal Budget to politics in the days ahead.

IN its blueprint for Vision 20:2020, the Federal Government listed about 32 priority areas. The scope covers a broad spectrum of human endeavours with the economy, governance and general administration occupying prime positions. The government’s programme on governance and general administration is broken into eight parts,  which include governance and political system; national security and civil defence, as well as legislature and anti-corruption.  The authorities have proposed to spend huge sums of money on various capital projects under the programmes, which are to be executed in phases under four years.

The funding of the projects, a lot of which are for the rehabilitation and provision of infrastructure, does not preclude allocations to the diverse sectors of the economy from Federal estimates, such as being proposed in the 2012 budget presented by President Goodluck Jonathan, to the National Assembly last Monday in Abuja. And every year, the government has presented similar budgets under different tags.

Unlike in the past, this year’s appropriation has, however, elicited more uproar than applause among the populace. No thanks to the controversy over the plan by the authorities to remove fuel subsidy. The issue has been turned into a tinker box, with the opposition parties and organized labour frowning on what they perceive as a move to strangulate the populace. Accordingly, many civil society groups and organisations are threatening to stop the removal, which the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said on Wednesday would be carried out after the ongoing broad consultations by the president.

But there are those who believe that perhaps, the hoopla would not have assumed the current tempo if majority of Nigerians had felt the real impact of governance through the practical application and judicious use of huge public funds allocated to numerous projects since 1999 when Nigeria returned to civil rule. According to some, the government had promised to use funds accruing from oil price hikes in the past to fix roads and rehabilitate other infrastructure in terrible conditions.  Most of those vital sectors in deplorable state have become permanent scars in the nation’s landscape.

Subtly, the leadership of the National Assembly has given vent to the problem. Both the President of the Senate, David Mark, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, have expressed concern on the haphazard implementation of past budgets. Mark was particularly angry because of what he considers as the lip service often paid to budget implementation. The consequence, he said, had been policy somersault and outright abandonment of core projects in many cases.

“Over the years, we have listened to very beautiful and impressive budget speeches. Unfortunately, the implementation has not been matched with words as economic policies often lack continuity and projects are needless, discarded or abandoned,” Mark noted. The chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Ahameed Maccido, is also miffed about the shabby implementation of budget with the domino effect on service delivery to voters and indeed the entire citizenry.  According to him, such implementation had been more on recurrent.

The attendant crisis emanating from such budget implementation, many said, has resonated in the socio-economic and political life of the country, which Speaker Tambuwal has vehemently renounced. He remarked that, “It is noteworthy that the executive has made the completion of all ongoing projects a critical aspect of this year’s budget. The sheer number of uncompleted and mostly abandoned projects and programmes in this country boggles the mind. It is the single most obvious sign of shoddy government implementation of the national budget over the years. This country is today facing some of the toughest challenges in history. We face daunting security and economic problems and our people look up to us to for assurance that we understand the enormity of the task; that we know how to tackle the problems; that we are, in fact, tackling the problems.”

Tambuwal hoped that a new era was here, given the general expect ations of Nige- rians. He was tried to unde- rscore the political consequences of elected public officers not being able to meet the genuine yearnings of those who voted them into office. “We hope that this time round, we shall break the jinx of low budget implementation. The truth is, there is no better signal that a government is alive to its responsibility than through its strict adherence to its own budget proposal,” Tambuwal stated.

Some individuals, including a number of legislators, have also raised questions on the import of the government’s greater emphasis on certain areas other than the sectors that can encourage political stability necessary for good governance and sustainability of the current democratic values and culture.  One of such areas being singled out is the huge allocation to security. Though they agreed that the current general insecurity in the country required a proactive action, the fundamental problem was what some described as the seeming lapses in intelligence gathering. According to them, an improved intelligence apparatus can make a lot of difference in the coming days in the country.

Most people share the view of the Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Niger Delta Affairs, Senator Nurudeen Abatemi-Usman and a member of the House, Dakuku Peterside that raised teasers over the whopping N921.91 billion allocation to security, given the unfriendly political climate occasioned by the issue of unemployment and other challenges facing majority of the Nigerian population. “Though we need to realize the issue of security concerns, a combination of six or seven ministries put together but we all know that security is a principal and primary role of government because we have high rate of unemployment, collapsed infrastructure and with no right governance regime in place, security has totally collapsed.. If security must be addressed, the president must address these critical issues and on addressed on a sustainable basis,” Abatemi-Usman cautioned.

Another area of worry to political observers is the implication of the gathering storm over the plan by the government’s removal of oil subsidy. Many groups have been beating their war drums in case the government eventually took the step. The concern is that the current ‘dispute’ could compound security challenge if those groups and individuals opposed to the plan decide to make good their threats of embarking on street protests and similar actions meant to achieve their aim. This could further raise political tension, especially in the early part of the year when elections have been scheduled to hold in six states. Already, groups like the Campaign for Democracy [CD] believe the battle line had been drawn between the authorities and Nigerians. Kaduna-based activists, Shehu Sani, remarked that it was apparent that the mind of the government was made on the subsidy saga in spite of the claim by the minister of finance that the president was still holding consultations towards building a consensus on the plan. And with the Nigerian Labour Congress [NLC] vowing that its opposition to the government could take any form if it removed the subsidy, the politics of the 2012 Federal Budget underscores an ominous sign to the gradual political re-engineering going on through the staggered governorship poll next year.