Lawan, Gbajabiamilia, Omo-Agege Culpable As Report Shows How National Assembly Abuse Appropriation Powers, Inflates Budgets

A report has emerged on how officials and members of the National Assembly are abusing their constitutional powers to arbitrarily flood the budget with vague, frivolous, and constituency-like projects during the process of the annual budget review.

According to an Appropriation Policy report released by BudgIt (a budget monitoring and advocacy group) on Tuesday, an analysis of the proposed and approved budgets for the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years revealed infractions by principal officers of both chambers of the National Assembly.

BudgIt revealed that the majority of the insertions in the 2021 and 2022 budgets are projects that ideally should be the responsibilities of subnational governments (state and local governments).

The report noted that despite the fact that the Executive had earmarked N100bn for Zonal Intervention Projects (ZIPs) — also known as constituency projects, nominated by all members of the National Assembly — an additional 2,636 and 3,069 constituency projects valued at N208.15bn and N276.33bn were added to the 2021 and 2022 budgets respectively.

“It is worthy of note that 614 street light projects with a cumulative value of N75.83bn, which were insertions observed in 2021, increased to 902 street light projects in 2022 valued at N114.95bn.

“Likewise, the construction of civic/town halls and installation of boreholes, which ordinarily should be the duty of local governments, were inserted into the 2021 and 2022 budgets. While the installation of 364 boreholes and construction of 47 civic/town halls were insertions observed in 2021, the installation of 365 boreholes and construction of 73 civic/town halls were insertions observed in 2022.

“The National Assembly domiciled most of the insertions in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (including quite a number of MDAs under it) as 1,125 and 1,522 projects were identified as insertions into the budgets of the ministry and its agencies in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

“For proper context, the cumulative monetary value of insertions into the budget of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) in 2021 was N122.6bn—which is 58.08% of the total capital expenditure envelope of the ministry and the other 45 departments, agencies and parastatals under it,” it added,

In the 2022 budget alone, the report specifically linked 7 projects valued at N1.45bn to the speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, 4 projects valued at N5bn were linked to Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege while 4 projects valued at N1.058bn were linked to Senate President, Ahmed Lawan.

In its recommendations, the report urged the judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court, to make a final judicial pronouncement on the scope of the powers of appropriation granted to the National Assembly in the constitution, especially as it regards the authority to arbitrarily insert new capital projects in the annual budget.

“While we wait for the judicial interpretation of the appropriation powers granted to the National Assembly, it is expedient that until the Supreme Court makes the pronouncement, the interest of the National Assembly is captured during the budget preparation process.

“This will to a large extent, limit the distortions caused by the arbitrary insertions by the National Assembly and also limit the instances of projects assigned to MDAs that have neither the mandate nor capacity to implement,” the report added.