During Wednesday’s plenary session, members of the Federal House of Representatives passed the 2014 budget proposal through the second reading after heated debate.
Leading the debate on the bill, Mulikat Adeola-Akande, the house leader, emphasised the need to expedite action on the consideration of the bill.
In his contribution, John Enoh, chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation, who admitted the huge budget deficit, however argued that the problem could be surmounted.
He noted that the budget estimates submitted by the Executive are basically fixed by the oil benchmark price of $76.5; and a stable exchange rate will create more jobs and increase growth.
In his view, Ford Ike noted that whatever the House “finds wrong with the budget, the constitution has given us power to appropriate. If we stay here and criticise the government we are simply pursuing shadows.
“The budget is not a political process but a financial one. It is easy to criticise the government. But we must be reasonable and should not play politics with the process”.
However, Mustapha Khabeeb expressed concern over the illegal and unconstitutional way in which Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) carries out its responsibilities, following the remittance of 25 per cent of its earnings and the withholding of the huge portion of 75 per cent.
He observed that if the country’s revenue is properly utilised, then “there will be no need for to borrow from anybody”, stressing that “we need waivers in businesses as we need businesses to pay taxes”.
In his own view, Samson Osagie, the minority whip, raised questions about how the budget sets to attain the objectives it outlines, unremitted oil revenue, missing pension fund and whether the government can be able to check oil theft and sabotages in the oil industry, which proliferation obstructed the performance of last year’s budget greatly.
He criticised one of the budget’s thrust of job creation, condemning the YOU-WIN and SURE-P projects as merely handout schemes, suggesting instead, that “there should be sustainable way of creating wealth”.
Also speaking, Ali Ahmed expressed optimism that the budget has the potential of being the first to conform to the constitution, as it came after the enactment of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA). But he drew attention to the fact that in compliance with Section 26 of the FRA, the minister of finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala should be urged to give a breakdown of the budget’s disbursement schedules in order to mitigate the regular occurrence of non release of funds to ministries, departments and agencies of government (MDAs).
He also drew attention to the drop in appropriation to the Judiciary while some MDAs are allocated huge sums for the conduct of research and development (R and D) activities.
He suggested that such votes for R and D should be skimmed off the allocations of MDAs and given to the Judiciary, which plays a vital role in running a democracy.
