This budget delay is harmful

The 2016 budget has recorded a number of firsts in the history of Nigeria. It is the most controversial, the first in President Muhammadu Buhari’s Change Agenda, the first to be declared missing and the first to be highly padded. It is also the nation’s highest in norminal terms since independence and
longest in the passage process. Amidst these controversies, the budget is yet to be signed into law four months into the year. It is a known fact that  a budget any where is a document that the executive and the legislature haggle about. In developed countries, the stalemate in the budget is usually as a result of different political parties or interest group approach to the general welfare of the people. It is either that taxes should be raised on the rich or its base should be expanded to include the middle class. Arguments are also on how much is devoted to social welfare. The Nigeria budget stalemate is not in any way connected to this philosophy. It is about the welfare of the super rich and those in government. The budget delay is giving the nation at large a bad image and worse still the legislature as many are insinuating that the law makers are looking for personal benefit from the budgeting process. While the struggle for supremacy between the executive and the legislature is ongoing in the budget process, the economy is in distress and needs urgent attention. The injection of government funds into the economy to oil the wheels of economic progress is held down by the absence of a functional budget. Local as well as international investors have now adopted a wait and see attitude. Nigeria with its growing unemployment cannot afford to miss out investment inflow. The more the budget is delayed the longer the wait of investors to make investment decisions. The current state of the Nigerian economy does not permit the luxury of a long wait.  Many Nigerians have dismissed the budget as a jinxed document. It is a sad commentary that the budget started up with a zero budgeting system as the traditional system was by the present government but resorted to the envelope system it had castigated as inefficient. We are not surprised that the budget has gone this way as the document is a budget overwhelmed with back-and-forth that has embarrassed Nigeria before the international community. The new twist in the whole thing is the delisting of Lagos-Calabar coastal railway project, among others, which the legislators claimed were not contained in the original version presented to it. Yes, it is true that there was an error in the original budget proposal where the amount for the project appeared without the project head. This was promptly corrected when it was discovered by the Minister of Transport. This is why the Executive has continued to insist it was contained in the version duly received by the parliament. We state here that the continued delay in the final approval of the budget is not in the interest of Nigerians and we urge the two parties to this unfortunate development to take the interest of Nigerian into consideration and allow the budget to be signed into law as those who ordinarily should be the beneficiaries of the budget are now left to wallow in hardship and poverty as the nation’s economic woes deepen.