EDITORIAL

Fiscal Responsibility A Must ...April 16, 2011

It was not long ago that the Nigerian nation was shaken by a struggle between several offices at the apex of government to try and put the cat back into the bag, after having let it out to the general good of the nation, but to the detriment of the leadership's continuous looting of the national treasury.  While the media for once did a good job of hanging onto the issue for some time, in our opinion, some also tried to kill the messenger, which ultimately will not have done the nation good. By that we mean the unwarranted heat that was generated against the office of the Central Bank Governor, who has hitherto been forthcoming on the issue.

The issue of the disproportionate ratio of recurrent and overhead expenditure that has been steadily growing for years desperately needed someone to speak up for its turnaround. And who better do that but someone with the facts to support what he is talking about.  Unfortunately, the legislature, instead of doing the most gentlemen thing, by reviewing the issue, accepting responsibility, and making amends, decided to crucify the messenger, and if it proves obviously wrong to the general public, then grill him and discredit him. What was reported as having been disclosed at an event by the Nigerian Central Bank Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, which was soon picked up by almost every news publication in the country, was that about a quarter of the recurrent expenditure is spent on (and by) the National Assembly.  What that means, according to the reports that followed the incident is that, if you take all the funds spent in the routine running of government including paying salaries, about a quarter of the funds are consumed by the legislature.

The real issue however is, the cost of running government has to be trimmed, by plugging some of the most obvious leaks. And if “charity does not begin at home” how reliable is any claim that such charity as a policy will ever be implemented.  By that we mean if the legislature is not willing to start with themselves, how will we trust that they will go after others that have proven to be the “black hole” of the government, which sucks up all the resources that should go into developing the nation and its people. The executive branch is no better. Many funds solicited by the executive in its generally wasteful spending is approved without much scrutiny.

The current Administration of Goodluck Jonathan has also introduced a new dangerous trend, as widely reported by many media though rarely discussed, of tabling requests to the legislature without even caring to provide reasons for the demand of funds.  Remember what the Danjuma Presidential Advisory Commitee came back with after its investigation and analysis; it tabled the statistics about the alarming rate of disproportionate expenditure as “from 39:61 percent in 2000AD to 60:40% in 2010 and a projected further deterioration to 71:29% this year.”  That means that while spending on govrnment grew just 21% in ten years (2000-2010) we witnessed a whopping 11% growth of such expenditure within just one year of President Jonathan.

We note that the Senate President, Senator David Mark, after taking so much heat over the issue, announced to the press that NASS is ready to embark on some amends by starting the spending and salary cuts on themselves, and then extending it to checking the perceived excesses of the executive. That, if we might say, is actually the MAJOR function NASS was elected to perform but neglected it, in the usual scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours game they have been playing with the executive since the return of the current democratic dispensation in 1999.

Early into the Obasanjo Administration, When House Speaker Ghali Umar Na’abba stood up to stop the fiscal irresponsibility of the executive, he was punished so much by his colleagues and the ruling party PDP, that to date he has not recovered politically.  That is why we do not believe a single word the Senate President said, until and unless he acts on it (his words).

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