By  Eze Onyekpere

The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, as amended, in S. 14 (2) (a) states the sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through the constitution derives all its powers and authority. Government therefore acts on behalf of the people who are the ultimate sovereigns. The Constitution also provides for the participation of people in their government, including participation in fiscal affairs and economic governance. Such participation cannot be possible and will be meaningless without access to information.

In the discharge of its fiscal and economic duties, governments set up companies and enterprises commonly referred to as government owned enterprises (GOEs). These are public companies, which belong metaphorically speaking to all citizens and taxpayers. Government spends public resources to set them up, appoints directors and managers to run the GOEs in the public interest, and determines the ground rules including remuneration of the management and personnel of the GOEs. Most of these GOEs are involved in businesses where they earn incomes and profits. They are supposed to maintain good accounting and corporate governance practices in accordance with the law and international best practices. Their annual projections of income and expenditure are like the estimated of ministries, departments and agencies and need to be presented to and approved by the representatives of the people in the legislature. Like all companies, their profits and surpluses belong to their owner, which is the government on behalf of the people.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) provides in S.21 (1) that Government corporations, agencies and government owned companies listed in the Schedule to the Act or subsequently added thereto pursuant to the provisions of the Act shall, not later than 6 months from the commencement of the Act and not later than the end of the second quarter of every year, cause to be prepared and submitted to the Minister of Finance, their estimates of revenue and expenditure for the next three financial years. By subsection (2), each of the bodies referred to in subsection (1) of this section shall submit to the Minister not later than the end of August in each financial year: (a) an annual budget derived from the estimates submitted in pursuance of subsection (1) of this section; and (b) projected operating surplus broken down into quarterly estimates which shall be prepared in line with acceptable accounting practices. By subsection 3, the Minister shall cause the estimates submitted in pursuance of subsection (2) of this section to be attached as part of the Appropriation Bill to be submitted to the National Assembly.

Since 2007 when the FRA was enacted, GOEs have been ignoring this provision and the Ministers appeared to have forgotten asking them to make available their estimates of income and expenditure for submission to the National Assembly. However, this position is changing since the Federal Government has been running on very lean resources and huge deficits; operating surplus has been identified as a source of public revenue which has not been properly tapped.

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Unlike the general federal estimates which is publicly presented to the National Assembly, hosted on the website of the Budget Office of the Federation and in other government portals, the estimates of income and expenditure of the GOEs are not made available to the public. They are neither hosted on the website of the GOEs, the Budget Office of the Federation or in any other government portal. They are as such unknown to Nigerians, the ultimate beneficial owners of the GOEs. This makes it extremely difficult to exercise citizens’ oversight over the management and allocation of their income and expenditure. The extant circumstances, encompassing the right of all Nigerians to information about GOEs, demands that these estimates be placed in the public domain, in the same way the federal estimates are made public.

The FRA did not explicitly state what the National Assembly should do with the estimates of income and expenditure of the GOEs. Whether they should face consideration and approval like the federal estimates and whether they should be subject to presidential assent when approved by NASS like the federal estimates. It is imperative that the FRA expressly states that the estimates, considering that they are about public funds should be approved by the legislature and subject to presidential assent.

The imperative of public access to the estimates of GOEs before approval is that there would be popular inputs into their budget, considering that citizens will be part of the process through the National Assembly and expression of public opinion in the media. The culture of secrecy and opaqueness has encouraged corruption, abuse of office and mismanagement of public resources. This will also help the GOEs to focus and take concrete steps for the realization of the mandates as stated in their enabling laws. Their annual reports, budget monitoring and performance reports, financial statements/accounts as well as audited accounts and recommendations of the Auditor General should also be made available on their websites and other designated public portals.

The budget estimates, implementation and reporting of GOEs needs to be opened up for the institutionalization of a culture of transparency, accountability, value for money and as a step in the realization of their mandates.

Onyekpere writes from Lagos