Who wants a lame duck legislature?

 According to the time-honoured cliché, “he who goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing”. In its simplicity, it has always served as a personal check for those who apply discretion to daily living, with respect to accumulation of debt, especially when the capacity to repay remains in doubt.

 However, it is doubtful if that saying holds the same relevance for the top echelon of Nigeria’s leadership community. This is so judging from how the lure of easy money (at any price and from any source) seems to define the choice of fiscal initiatives of governance at federal, state and local government tiers. 

During the past week President Muhamadu Buhari requested the National Assembly to approve a three-year plan for borrowing the sum of $29.96 billion (about N10 trillion), from a cock tail of sources including the World Bank, China and other countries. 

The government also asked for approval for the virement of some sections of the 2016 budget. The request for virement is in respect of seeking approval from the National Assembly to enable the executive arm transfer funds from one budget item to another in the face of emerging exigencies that demand such response. 

Meanwhile the loan request is (as the executive arm claims), for the purpose of developing various sectors such as infrastructure, agriculture, health, education, water supply and even promotion of economic growth as well as employment generation.

While the virement remains a routine administrative initiative that may not qualify for significant bellyache – as long as the administration comes clear with the legislature over its propriety, the loan issue is a different kettle of fish. By its sheer magnitude the loan will remain a burden for this country and future generations, thereby qualifying it for more than casual attention by all Nigerians.  For instance, not a few Nigerians would have wished that the loan request had come under more conducive circumstances than now when public take on the fortunes of the 2016 budget is anything but satisfactory and the administration’s economic management style is largely seen to be bereft of consistency and dynamism.

As is easy to recall, just recently the National Assembly had through a joint resolution by the two chambers of the Senate and House of Representatives invited the President to come and address them and by implication the entire nation in respect of plans to take the country out of the present state of recession of the economy. It is on record that the invitation is yet to be honoured by the President courtesy of some of his aides, who encouraged him to spurn the opportunity to be on the same page with the legislature. 

Admissibly, the onset of the recession has provided many observers with the frame on which to judge the management of the budget by the administration either in its favour or otherwise. The National Assembly had by that invitation, only acted in response to public expectations that the two arms of government should work in synergy over issues of governance. Not only was the invitation spurned, but the Presidency trivialised the issue with the argument that was hinged on a supposed impropriety of protocol in inviting the President.

Just as it is said that what goes around comes around, some of the very issues that would have been raised and resolved through that visit and its likely aftermath, – if it had held, are now featuring in the President’s new request for legislative approval. Of course, at the time of that invitation it suited the fancy of the President’s aides, including those in charge of liaison between the Presidency and the National Assembly to play the card of omniscience and infallibility, even at the expense of denying the country the proper buy-in by the legislature into the management of the economy. 

In any case from the medley of policy somersaults associated with the nation’s economy under the present administration, it had always been clear that all is not well with the President’s economic blueprint for the simple reason that much of its features are not domesticated in the framework of the realities of contemporary life in the country, at least when seen from the eyes of the masses. While it is true that the government made juicy promises to the Nigerian electorate in order to win votes and power during electioneering campaign, many of such promises are proving rather utopian and therefore hard to fulfil. 

Already it is no more news that the 2016 budget, the first full year package by the present administration has suffered mixed fortunes – failing in some core areas and succeeding in others. By the same token the forth coming 2017 budget is already suffering avoidable delay as it is not likely to be presented to the National Assembly before November. 

Although the executive has promised to start implementing it by January 1st 2017, it needs to be seen how that will be, as even if it comes by November it may not be functional until maybe March 2017, since the National Assembly – not being a lame duck facility, may not just rubber stamp whatever is submitted by the executive in the name of a budget proposal, but will insist on carrying out due diligence procedures on it. 

It is easy to recall how the legislative treatment of the 2016 budget passage rites was erroneously christened ‘padding’ by the Presidency owing to the erroneous belief in that quarters that whatever is submitted to the legislature as budget proposal must be passed accordingly. Clearly the National Assembly will be expected by Nigerians to do the needful with respect to the 2017 budget in the interest of the nation, without fear of any name calling by the executive. 

It is in the context of protecting the national interest, perhaps more profoundly than the executive arm that the National Assembly should address the loan request by the President, with every discretion at its disposal. Given its capacity for consensus, it can be trusted not to betray Nigerians by playing lame duck over this loan. At least the two factors of a yet to improve economic management style of the executive arm on one hand, and the unmistakeable potential of the loan package to enslave Nigerians into the future on the other hand, dictate so.