From thisday today tuesday


http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=108085


There were feelers yesterday that the Presidency may end up opening a can of worms in the National Assembly in the handling of the 2008 budget.
A meeting between President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and the leadership of the National Assembly earlier scheduled for Sunday night in Abuja, where the budget gridlock was to be ironed out, could not hold.
The meeting has been rescheduled for today at the instance of the Senate President, Senator David Mark, who is also the Chairman of the National Assembly.


Many of the National Assembly leaders who were supposed to attend the Sunday meeting were not in Abuja because the Legislature was on recess.
Both the Senate and the House of Representatives resume plenary session this morning while the crucial meeting between their leadership and Yar’Adua holds this night at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The postponement of the Sunday night meeting had come amid reports of another scandal, this time round, with respect to the contentious 2008 budget.
The scandal is said to stem from the alleged padding of the budget by the Appropriation Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives under the chairmanship of Senator Iyiola Omisore and Hon. Wale Adegoke respectively.


There were reports linking the Committees to the alleged padding of the 2008 budget, which is one of the reasons why Yar’Adua has refused to sign the money bill into law.
THISDAY gathered from sources in the National Assembly and the Presidency that Yar’Adua is aware of the “padding” which the legislators forced on some Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) without recourse to the original proposals by the Executive as presented to the National Assembly joint session on November 8, 2007.
Five ministers, whose identities were not disclosed, according to sources, reported to Yar’Adua how the Appropriation Committees coerced them into jacking up original estimates proposed for capital expenditure heads in their ministries’ estimates for 2008.


It was learnt that the money, allegedly running into several billions of naira, was meant to be “tracked down” subsequently by the legislators through “oversight” monitoring of the budget performance.
The ministers, it was learnt, were expected to collaborate with the legislators to ensure that the money added to the budget, upon release by the Executive, find its way out to meet their predetermined purposes.
THISDAY gathered yesterday that Yar’Adua had, upon receipt of the reports by the five ministers, directed the Minister of Finance, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, to issue a memo to all the cabinet ministers on the increases in the estimates proposed for them by the Finance Ministry and the Budget Office in the 2008 budget.


Many of them, it was learnt, could not defend the wide disparities between the amounts proposed for them in the Executive budget and the increases introduced to their advantage by the National Assembly.
A National Assembly source said yesterday that he was aware that a lot of underhand dealings took place which led to the jacking up of the budgets of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
The source said that there was “bribe-for-budget” like it had happened before in the National Assembly.
It was learnt that Yar’Adua and officials of the Executive arm that would attend today’s meeting with the National Assembly leaders may lay the facts of the malfeasance on the table.
The chairmen of the Appropriation Committees who are expected to be on the team of the National Assembly to the meeting may be asked to defend some of the issues involved in the alleged increments in the monies proposed for the MDAs.

It would be recalled that under the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, there was a similar incident in the 2005 budget which cost Senator Adolphus Wabara his position as Senate President.
Wabara was reportedly involved in a N55-million-bribe-for-budget scandal which the National Assembly had forced the former Education Minister, Professor Fabian Osuji, to part with for his ministry to get a princely appropriation.


Ahead of the crucial meeting this night, Yar’Adua had reportedly been worried that the National Assembly members did not take into account some of his priorities in the formulation of the original budget proposals.
Reports had quoted sources close to the Presidency as saying Yar’Adua was concerned that “the National Assembly did not take into consideration the President’s priorities in line with overall national plan, macroeconomic stability and sector strategies which made him to place emphasis on completing new projects rather than start new ones which could end up being abandoned”.
For instance, some of the areas where there were distortions, according to the sources include new projects that were introduced into the budget without consultations with the Executive.


According to them, “The issue is whether the legislature can unilaterally initiate projects and provide money for such projects in the budget without consultations with the executive given that the design, costing, due process certification, execution and supervision of such projects is vested in the executive.”
The concern of Yar’Adua, as reported, was that “The National Assembly distorted the budget by encouraging Ministries, Department and Agencies to submit to them sundry projects for which they allocated money thus usurping the functions of the executive whose duty it is to initiate budget.”
The Budget Office under the purview of the Executive was said to have queried how the National Assembly was able to determine the costs of the projects inserted, figures which the budget office contended were just guesstimates which have made “nonsense of the budgeting process.”
Another issue which Yar’ Adua reportedly kicked against was the raising of the crude oil price benchmark from $53.86 to $59 per barrel.


Quoting the Budget Office, the reports said: “The raising of the benchmark oil price from $53.83 per barrel to $59 per barrel was agreed with officials of the Ministry of Finance based on the understanding that the extra revenue would be used to reduce the fiscal deficit in the original Executive proposal.
“As it turned out, the National Assembly has devoted much of the extra revenue to increase total expenditure, resulting in an increase in the deficit from N468 billion under the Executive budget proposal to N554 billion.”
The sources, as further reported, said: “The choice of $53.83 per barrel benchmark was based on a macro-economic framework designed to ensure stability in the system, bearing in mind the necessity to keep liquidity at a manageable level, thereby keeping inflation in check and provide an environment for interest rates to start to move downward which the present increases would jeopardise.”
Significantly, Yar’Adua, had also kicked against increase in capital allocations and these, according to sources, included the unilateral increase of the capital votes for several ministries including: Ministry of Transportation (N61 billion, of which N36 billion is for new projects); Agriculture and Water Resources (N20.4 billion); Defence (N17 billion); Interior (N15 billion); FCT (N12.9 billion); Science & Technology (N6.3 billion), etc.
It was learnt that the Budget Office’s contention was that “while some of these projects could probably benefit from increased allocations, the lawmakers didn’t factor in the implementation capacity of the various ministries since they were not consulted which means if the money come into the system, they are likely going to be wasted.”


[b]The National Assembly was also said to have introduced new vote heads in the budget which were not originally in the proposed budget.
Reports had quoted sources close to government to have claimed that the lawmakers on their own inserted new vote heads into the budget such as, Federal Polytechnics (Bali, Ekowe, and Ugbokolo).
They said: “Both Bali and Ekowe were established in 2005 as Federal institutions, but were not provisioned for at that time because they had not taken off. For this reason they were also not budgeted for in the 2008 Executive Budget. Provision was also made for Ugbokolo, a state government owned institution in the federal budget.”
They also added that “several professional Council Registration Boards that never used to be in the Budget (Architecture, Quantity Surveyors, Societies of Engineers, Estate Surveyors, Builders and Town Planners as well as Advertising Practitioners of Nigeria etc) were allocated money,” pointing out that “the total amount budgeted under these new vote heads is N2.1 billion.”
The President was also said to have frowned on the increase in the personnel costs granted to a number of ministries and agencies without making provision for the social costs such as pension and NHIS, which “would have been calculated automatically if it had been based on the Budget Office’s template had there been consultations with the executive.” [/b]

just imagine they would soon include Amala seller association

According to the report, “A few of the cases of personnel cost increases include the Ministries of Agriculture (227.3 million); Interior (520 million); Transportation (N635.8 million); Energy (N526 million); Commerce and Industry (382 million); Culture and Tourism (N116 million) etc.
“The increases were not based on any known shortfall reported by these ministries, and officials of the ministries confirmed that they had no shortfalls. So where will these monies go? Assuming there would be increases, should there not be consultation with the executive on how it would be spent?”
In addition to these was the issue of increase in allocations to overhead costs to ministries that did not solicit for such an increase.


According to the report, “There are some unsolicited increases in the Overhead allocation to some Ministries including Education (by N1.65 billion); SGF (by N2.1 billion); Youth Development (by N377 million); Presidency (by N900 million), etc.”
Yar’ Adua, the reports said, also kicked against some of the contentious mandatory clauses in the budget such as the Clause 7(1) which wants the Accountant-General of the Federation and CBN Governor to furnish National Assembly monthly reports.
According to sources, “This is seen as undue interference with executive functions.”
Other clauses which are seen as undue interferences with executive functions are clause 7(2) which wants the Accounting Officers to present quarterly reports to National Assembly and Clause 7 (3) which wants Accountant-General of the Federation to disclose details of funds releases to National Assembly.
But Chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Information, Senator Ayogu Eze, said yesterday that Yar’Adua should be concerned with the function of the Executive which, according to him, was to propose the budget and leave the National Assembly to appropriate expenditure in line with constitutional powers vested in it to so do.
He said that the National Assembly had not overstepped its bounds in the handling the 2008 budget, adding that it should not reside in the contemplation of the Executive that the National Assembly is a rubber stamp institution.
Eze, who is also a member of the Appropriation Committee that allegedly padded the budget, spoke yesterday against the backdrop of a document circulated Sunday in Abuja which justified why Yar’ Adua has not signed the 2008 budget.
He stated that it was incorrect to say that the lawmakers injected fictitious projects into the budget.
According to him, “It is the responsibility of the executive to propose the budget and it is the duty of the National Assembly to appropriate funds for the projects.
“Don’t forget that majority of the National Assembly members are members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and they have manifesto.
“They know the needs of their people. We are not rubber stamps. We are responsible for the needs of our people and we do critical analysis of the need of the people.”

Tell that to the Marines

Eze said further that “There will be a meeting between the leaders of the National assembly and the President on Tuesday (today) and we hope that the meeting will resolve all issues surrounding the budget.”

Yaradua Never Back down on this Parasitic Elite