By Rotimi Fasan

WHEN President Muhammadu Buhari presented the 2016 Appropriation Bill to a joint session of the National Assembly on 22 December 2015, he couldn’t have envisaged the type of controversy that has since trailed it. No, Buhari couldn’t have anticipated that what was initially praised as a budget of great promise would turn out to be the non starter that it is fast turning out to be- except somebody takes the bold step necessary to salvage it from imminent asphyxiation.

For no doubt the proposed budget seems at birth to be on life support. It is in desperate need of oxygen. But is the president ready to do the needful and snatch victory from the near-certain jaw of defeat? For if what Nigerians seems to be hearing has any truth in it, then this present administration is already being held in the jugular by so-called budget rats, a ring of mafia characters that is said to be domiciled in the civil service but with tentacles spread across and into all spheres of government including the presidency.

Perhaps it’s a measure of how powerful this criminal ring is that the presidency not only appears unable to dislodge it from its entrenched enclave in the civil service but also seems too hobbled by its activities to reverse the destruction it has wrought with the criminal padding and/or alteration of figures and other details in the different heads and sub-heads of the 2016 budget proposal. So outlandishly criminal were the alterations made to the original appropriation bill that those supposed to have designed them couldn’t believe the evidence of their own eyes. They rather quickly disowned the embarrassing fabrication altogether.

Even when Buhari could not have anticipated the controversy that has thus far enveloped the contents of the 2016 Appropriation Bill, he must with hindsight now, if not before, realise that his so-called budget of hope had been dead on arrival, even as he presented it at a joint session of the National Assembly.
It was hardly three weeks after the president made his presentation when the first cries of horror emanated from the Senate chamber that both the soft and hard copies of the Appropriation Bill had gone missing.

Various twists and turns were offered as explanation for what the problem might be concerning the whereabouts of the documents. Was it stolen or did it simply disappear into thin air?
Were two versions of the original document presented, as some senators claimed, in a manner that rendered both versions allegedly submitted by Mr. Ita Enang unusable? Or did somebody make unauthorised changes to the documents in a bid to aid their withdrawal? The dominant song on the lips of some of our senators was that President Buhari was trying to use quite unorthodox means to withdraw the appropriation bill after realising that it was replete with errors.

The president’s letter to the National Assembly would seem to confirm that view. Nevertheless everything appeared back to normal after the president’s letter. That was until the latest hue and cry from the senate that the appropriation bill was so error-ridden that it just couldn’t be passed in its present form. Even ministers that had been invited to defend their ministerial appropriation disowned what they had supposedly drawn up. So what could have happened? Somebody somewhere must be up to some monkey business, tinkering with figures in an unseemly manner. And suspicion is strongly on the faceless civil servants working in the new Ministry of Budget and Planning and their counterparts in different sections of the civil service.

So far none of those under the cloud of suspicion have offered any explanation nor have they been called upon to speak. Everybody suddenly seems to have gone dumb. The budget cabal or rats as they are now being called appear so powerful indeed. Given the latest narratives about the adventures of this budget proposal, what has happened to it now appears to be far more serious than inadvertent errors.

A suspected syndicate of civil servants, it is now believed, has long set up at the heart of the civil service a systematic process of defrauding the state. They are being called upon to take responsibility for the despicable padding of the budget proposal. But as I have made clear above, nobody seems to be taking the right steps to expose this despicable syndicate. Or could it be that the so-called budget cabal are the scapegoats of bigger elements within the country’s corridors of power? Why does everyone appear helpless and clueless about what has to be done?

The word ‘cabal’ must evoke unpleasant memories among Nigerians. Persons in such conclaves are up to no good. They are a bunch of usually shadowy characters that have no public face but nevertheless exert enormous power where it matters. The last time we heard of a cabal was towards the very end of the Umar Yar’Adua administration. Then they held the entire country hostage and would not allow any smooth transition of power from the ailing Yar’Adua to Goodluck Jonathan.

They would rather exercise presidential power by proxy or else ensure that nothing gets done. President Jonathan seemed to be at the mercy of such a faceless group when he famously lamented that his administration had been infiltrated by Boko-Haram sympathisers. He seemed as helpless as the Buhari presidency seems now in the face of the onslaught that the so-called budget rats have unleashed on the 2016 Appropriation Bill.

Why has the president remained silent in the wake of the disclosures from the Senate about the budget? There appears more to this than meets the eye, even when we can all see that the more said about this budget the less Nigerians know of what is going or has gone on with it. Why is the presidency silent on the discrepancies in the budget?
President Buhari didn’t look like a Jonathan. His reputation as a tough nut preceded him even in his first coming as a military head of state. He may not be a philosopher-king but he is considered to be of far sterner stuff than Jonathan. Not one who would succumb to any blackmail. His candidacy was largely sold on the idea that he was of a more radical disposition than Jonathan.

He needs to assure Nigerians that he is still the same man Nigerians expected to right the wrongs of our recent past. His government which seems like a last ditch attempt to salvage Nigeria in the wake of the depredations of the last sixteen years must not fail. Nor should it appear weak on initiative. It must be decisive in dealing with apparent cases of crime and must bring to justice all those suspected to have done violence to the 2016 Appropriation Bill.