WAS the National Assembly right in insisting recently that non-compliance with budget is an impeachable offence and would not hesitate to invoke the power against President Jonathan? This is both a legal and a political question. All those who feel the members are once again over-reaching themselves are wrong.

The Appropriation Act, each year remains one of the most important piece of legislations at the very heart of government activities which itself is an access to the national purse by the executive. Every aspect of government involves the accumulation, control, management and expending of resources. But this must be done within the context of a legal framework in terms of purpose, policy and penalties.

Having said that, an impeachment exercise is not a tea party and that is why it is not lightly mentioned or engaged in. Impeachment leading to removal from office is rigorous, time consuming and potentially destabilising, even more so for a fragile polity like ours and so rarely an option.

Conducts necessitating such must be infractions of such nature that the high office of the President has been brought to some disrepute or the laws flagrantly violated by his person. The political dimension is that it is resolved one way or another through the instrumentality of power superiority. Non-implementation of budget is no doubt a species of violation of an existing law, but it may hardly be from motives of malice suggesting a high crime envisioned for removal from office.

The 2012 Appropriation Act has an aggregate expenditure of N4.748 trillion, just six percent increase from that of 2011 which was N4.484 trillion. The 2012 budget benchmarked the sale of crude oil at $70 per barrel and production expected at 2.4mbpd. In all of this, estimated growth rate is put at an ambitious 7.2% and an inflation rate at 9.5%. The Appropriation Act was signed into law in April 2012 and the National Assembly raised the alarm that the budget implementation was in the neighbourhood of 35%, meaning that something was seriously wrong. The Minister of Finance Dr Ngozi  Okonjo-Iweala came out with explanations and figures insisting that the budget is at 56% implementation level. According to her figures, so far, as at July end this year N404billion has been released of which N324billion is cash backed. Whatever be the case, what is at stakes is far more than the proprietary interests of either arm of government, but the wellbeing of Nigerians.

The United States of America Federalist papers have held this position from the early times of that republic: ‘’This power of the purse may in fact be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people’’. The legislative arm does have the peremptory powers to compel compliance using the oversight mechanism, but the citizens as a collective are as interested in effective budget implementation which itself is the optimisation of national resources. That is why sections 80-84 as well as 88-89 of the Constitution make express these powers as part of our fundamental law.

Remove compliance with budgetary provisions or the Appropriation Act and you will have a chaotic, non-regulated government functioning according to its own whims and caprices, a lawless regime at best. So important is budgetary compliance in any democracy as a measure of the well being of the state that several legal measures are in place to secure its full operation and observance in most jurisdictions. The US government shut down temporarily for weeks under President Clinton in the nineties over issues of budgetary expenditures and timelines in public spending.

Basic principles of government budgeting are (a)- fiscal discipline, which refers to Ministry’s or department’s ability to function within the budget; (b)- allocative efficiency- which refers to the allocation of governments scarce resources to their most productive use, i.e., allocation of budgetary resources to reflect the priorities of the  government; (c)- operational efficiency- which refers to ensuring that the highest possible output are produced within the given resources consistent with fiscal discipline. These matters seem mostly lost in our budgeting and post-budgeting activities for which reason the executive arm of government in Nigeria at the federal and state level see any interrogation of budget performance as an affront.

With the appropriation figure of over N4.7 trillion, there’s much that the government can achieve if there’s adequate fidelity to the provisions of the Act. A transformation President like Goodluck Jonathan campaigned to be must be very interested in high budget implementation and high service delivery. The challenge of compliance is posed by a systemic failure of anticipation of future expenditure and proper review of previous spending as a broad exercise in effective public financing. The MTEF of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007 is neither followed nor enforced on MDAs. It is to be noted that section 11(3)(a) of the Act provides thus: ‘’A medium term expenditure contain a macro-economic framework setting out the macro-economic projections for the next three financial  years and the underlying assumptions for those projections and an evaluation and analysis of the macro-economic projections for the preceding three years’’.

This very important need is yet to come before the National Assembly and hardly finds its way there.

Budgets in the public sector are aimed at providing services to communities effectively and efficiently. Achieving this is best realised through needs assessment of various sectors of the economy. But how best can these needs be assessed and ascertained? Can it be through the legislators engagements with all the sectors and the constituencies or through the executives direct out-reach to all segments and sectors within the polity?

Mr.  TONY ODIADI, a lawyer, wrote from Lagos.