By Dele Sobowale

“Reps raise 2015 budget by N134.5bn, pass N4.4tn.”

PUNCH. April 24, 2015.

It is just as well that over seventy per cent of the current representatives in the National Assembly will not be returning. This is probably the least productive legislative branch in the world today. Unproductive, that is, in anything which could be beneficial to the people of Nigeria. It might however be the front runner for mischief and idleness.

Naira sign

Only God knows how over four hundred adults, most highly educated, presumed to be capable of handling simple arithmetic, can in the last week of April pass a budget which the first three months have proved impossible to execute.

Yet, a month before most of them are sent to the dust bin of our political history, they increased the budget by N134.5bn at a time when aggregate revenue is not only falling rapidly, it is most likely to fall further.

Among the most irresponsible members of the House are those committees with oversight responsibilities for the oil and gas sectors of the economy. Among other duties, Nigerians would have expected that they will undertake to remain current with the trend of global prices of crude and gas as well as future trends – short, medium and long.

Additionally, they would regularly share the information with other members of the NASS to serve as guide to decisions about the budget. Obviously, they have failed to do this. Otherwise, it is difficult to imagine why so many adults, presumed to be knowledgeable could be asking for expenditure of revenue they know will never be realized.

Already, the price of crude oil had stayed stubbornly below the benchmark, sales are down, and are likely to get worse in April and May as some of our biggest customers have failed to take up their options. Even, non-oil exports are experiencing global resistance as many of our products are being rejected for quality reasons. Altogether, the picture which emerges is bleak. With the revenue projections so underwhelming, no serious legislators can agree to pass a budget higher than when it was first presented late last year.

“We are not amused.” Queen Victoria, 1819-1901.

Queen Victoria, like most monarchs, kept several clowns and court jesters, whose duty was to entertain the monarch and her guests – just as we have our own Ali Baba and Basket Mouth etc. Clowns performing before queens and kings however ran a terrible risk. One their jokes are not funny to the monarch they could hear the sentence passed: “I will make you shorter by a head” (Queen Elizabeth I, 1533-1603.

Since most of the jesters in the NASS have been “decapitated” by the voters, we can no longer threaten them with removal. We can only try to understand why patriotic adults will engage in an exercise in futility. What then could have informed this absurdity? The obvious answer is political vendetta. The second, closely related, is the quality of individuals we send to the NASS.

Nigerian politicians are largely irresponsible. Most of them are in the NASS for what they can get out of it not what they can contribute. That explains why important bills like PIB take forever to get through the House and they still don’t get passed. Similarly, annual budgets are treated with the disdain they don’t deserve. No budget had been passed before April since 2000 and none had been implemented by the Executive branch.

Yet, not once had the NASS conducted an inquiry into why a document taken seriously elsewhere in the world suffers this fate in Nigeria. Political vendetta underlies the current budget passed by the House. With most representatives on their way out, they feel no obligation to fashion out the best possible budget for the country. Instead what they have come up with is a banana peel for Buhari and the incoming NASS which will be dominated by the APC.

Most of them who can think, know it won’t work but they don’t give a damn. It remains to be seen if President Jonathan will sign the appropriation bill into law and join the jesters in a bid to register their displeasure that, for them, the party is over. If he does Jonathan would have sacrificed a great deal of the goodwill he garnered by conceding defeat immediately after the election results were announced. He will strengthen his claim to our eternal gratitude by not signing it.