2018: October 2017 is here oh, BOF!

With October hitting the mid-month mark, not a few observers of the Nigerian economy are wondering if the 2018 budget estimates will be presented to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari, at the worst in the remaining days of the month. An October presentation of the national budget has been long recognized as the starting point for its timely passage and optimum utility for the economy. As the subject of a piece of legislation the budget has a legal life of January 1st to December 31st of any designated year. However this cardinal democratic tenet of compliance with the law over the budget has become the intractable ‘Gordian Knot’ for the Budget Office of the Federation (BOF). From the National Assembly to various stakeholders in the economy, there has been a long standing consensus over the need for the country’s budget to run as provided by law, especially with the estimates reaching the National Assembly before October, in order for such to undergo due legislative process. 

For the 2018 budget, the expectation of its early launch is fueled by several factors including the claims by the BOF of having launched several reform measures pursuant to reinventing the country’s budget process. For instance the Second Quarterly Report of the 2017 budget by the BOF states that “budget implementation in Nigeria is currently undergoing transformational changes in preparation, execution, monitoring and evaluation”. This claims incidentally fits into a more academic template when it comes to the practical realities with respect to budgeting culture in Nigeria, as long as the reforms by the BOF do not translate into an early (January to December) budget for the country.  

This is why the apparent state of miasma surrounding what it will provide for and how it is to be structured, especially with respect to the poor showing of the 2017 budget provide little cause for cheer. Among the factors that impacted negatively on budget 2017 was the recession that hit the country from the second quarter of 2016 and lasted into the current year. This was even at a time when the economy was in no great shape. Although government officials are claiming that the recession is over, the expected expansion in scope of productivity and capital generation which would push the country out of recession is witnessed more in official statistics by government agencies, than on Nigeria’s streets where the people belong. Hence while the government may be shouting itself hoarse that the recession is over, many Nigerians do not agree.

Yet another factor that is less highlighted but remains equally debilitating like the others is the discordance among the policy implementation activities of some members of the government especially during the periods of the President’s hospitalization outside the country, when sheer power play among his lieutenants took centre stage, with some smart power brokers striving to distort and dominate the processes of governance for their benefit. For instance, presently trending is the unbelievable tale of an ailing Mr President approving oil contracts on the hospital sick bed, even at a time he was supposedly, and lawfully exempted from exercising his powers as President while the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was on seat.   

Against the backdrop of the foregoing and other factors not mentioned for lack of space, the 2018 budget may need to break new grounds in the country’s fiscal culture, if it has to progress beyond the stunted achievements of its 2017 predecessor. But whether it will offer any such goodies is anybody’s guess, when even the budget document is yet to appear in public for scrutiny and may in all likelihood, be belated whenever it comes. 

Nevertheless whenever budget 2018 appears it will inherit a complement of weaknesses from 2017 budget among which is a huge backlog of poorly or not implemented capital projects, much of which the government plans to embed into 2018 budget. Having put its hope for implementing the capital component of the budget on foreign (Chinese) loans, the executive is now heaping the blame for its failures on the legislature for not approving the loan requests and thereby strangulating the administration. At the recent meeting between the Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun and the National Assembly she had argued that the legislature failure to approve the President’s loan requests was responsible for the non-implementation of the capital component of budget 2017. However this was countered by the President of the Senate Bukola Saraki. The question now is what happens in 2018? Will the administration still depend on loans for capital projects, and if such is denied approval by the NASS what then happens?  

On this score the position of the administration does not tally with public take on the matter. At least one of the loan requests expectedly from China featured a ding dong affair between the National Assembly and the executive over clarifications in respect of vital details that would make the loan sell before the legislature and Nigerians. It was the failure of the executive to provide such details that delayed the approval. It would seem that the executive is still hung on the notion that unless the legislature operates as a rubber stamp facility, the country cannot move ahead. 

 Another area of concern for the 2018 budget is the practice of arbitrary selection of capital projects in the 2017 budget for implementation by the executive which the legislature frowns upon. The selective implementation of projects violates the entire budget culture and denies the exercise any semblance of order and lawlessness. 

Against the backdrop of the reforms by the BOF, the least Nigerians expect is the evolution of compliance of budget exercise with public expectations, not only at the federal level but across the states and even the local government councils. Yet the process will start from the national level and percolate downwards to the lower tiers of governance.

A burning question at this stage remains whether this generation of Nigerians will ever see a day when the budgets of every government in Nigeria will run as lawfully provided from January 1st to December 31st. This expectation puts the BOF on the spot.