The wrangling between the Presidency and the House of Representatives intensified on Wednesday with the two sides maintaining a hard position on the alleged poor implementation of the 2012 budget.While the Federal Government declared at a post- Federal Executive Council meeting media briefing in Abuja that it could not achieve 100 per cent budget implementation by September as directed by the lawmakers, the House said its resolution on the subject was irrversible.
The government’s position was communicated by the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The minister argued that achieving 100 per cent budget implementation was an impossibility.
Okonjo-Iweala said, “In terms of 100% implementation, I think that what I read that was said by sections of the National Assembly was that we would have to do 100% implementation of the budget by September.
“First, in my experience worldwide, there is hardly any country where you would implement 100% even by the end of the year and this is based on very broad experience.”
Reacting to the government’s position on Wednesday, the House said its resolution must be obeyed and that its members would commence impeachment proceedings against President Goodluck Jonathan if the government failed.
Spokesman for the House, Zakari Mohammed, told one of our correspondents in Abuja that, “The resolution on impeachment proceedings against Mr. President by September 18 if budget implementation is not up to 100 per cent stands.
“It is a resolution of the House, not a resolution by one person. There is nothing that can be done to change that resolution before September 18.The House is on break; we are not working now. We cannot continue to respond to the same old issue.”
Members of the lower chamber of the National Assembly had at their sitting last Thursday condemned the poor implementation of the 2012 national budget by Jonathan and resolved that the government must achieve 100 per cent implementation by the time they resume on September 18.
They also threatened to commence impeachment proceedings against the President if their demand was not met.
Flanked by the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku; and the Director-General, Bureau of Public Procurement, Mr. Emeka Eze, Okonjo-Iweala noted that her experience worldwide had shown that no country implemented budget 100 per cent even by the end of year not to talk of September as being demaded by the lower arm of the National Assembly.
She said the practice globally had been that governments would try to achieve 80 per cent and 90 per cent maximum at the end of the year.
The finance minister is also the co-ordinating minister of the Jonathan administration.
Okonji-Iweala, however, assured the lawmakers and Nigerians that the Executive arm of government was ready to implement the budget as much as possible.
She said, “I really think we need to focus on the joint endeavour that we have with the National Assembly which is that we are both interested in the same thing: the proper implementation of the budget for the benefit of the Nigerian people; and there is absolutely no controversy about that.
“I am sure that as the figures of the utilisation of budget and implementation are made known and as the National Assembly members get more of this information that the meeting of minds will become even more.
“We have been very open and transparent about the information we have. We shared with them the tables showing where we were in terms of end of May and I am sure that as they get the information as July 20 which is 56%, they will see that we are very much working for the same purpose and on the same page.”
Contrary to the submission of the House Committee on Appropriation Chairman, John Eno, that budget implementation from the findings of his committee was 35 per cent, Jonathan’s finance minister said the government at the end of May had achieved 56 per cent implementation.
“The budget implementation is about 35 percent,” Eno had told his colleagues during last Thursday’s sitting. But Okonjo-Iweala said on Wednesday that, “There is no lack of effort, no lack of goodwill. If we could go from 39% in May to 56% by mid-July, that shows a considerable leap and I’m quite confident that as we go month-by-month both the Executive and the National Assembly will be able to look at it and say ‘yes a good effort has been made for the country.’”
The minister added that a total of N404bn had been released and N324bn had been cash-backed. She assured Nigerians that third quarter fund would be released in two weeks.
The minister identified some of the challenges facing the efficient implementation of the budget to include the time frame needed to get the designs and conduct feasibility studies for constituency and new projects in the budget as well as the movement by the National Assembly of some funds from one category to another.
On the movement of funds, Okonjo-Iweala explained that the Executive had been working with the National Assembly to ensure that funds were moved to categories where ministers could be able to implement.
She said with the collaboration of the lawmakers, faster progress would be recorded in the implementation
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