A new phrase entered Nigeria’s political lexicon in 2016 and remained a regular feature of the national budget until 2020. That phrase is ‘padded budget’ or ‘budget padding’. At first, many believed whatever the executive alleged against the legislature as far as padding the budget was concerned. To a large extent, also, many believed that the allegation of padded budget was the executive’s own way of getting back at the legislature as the rift between both arms of government festered. That allegation trailed the 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 appropriation acts. But with Bukola Saraki and Yusuf Dogara no longer at the helm of affairs at NASS, many Nigerians believed that, with persons seen to have been handpicked by the President now in charge, the era of allegations and counter-allegations between both arms over budget padding was eternally over.

However, while the 2020 budget has been signed into law by the President without any allegation of budget padding, there are developments to suggest that the issue of budget padding has not been buried, as it were. A recent publication by an online newspaper, premiumtimesng.com, had raised details of what is believed to be padded into the budget amounting to about N264 billion. The online newspaper calculated what it believed were clandestinely added to the budget to amount to N246 billion. According to the report, the budget was jerked up, by our lawmakers, to N10.594 trillion from N10.33 trillion. The excess were added to accommodate some greed. However, one is not be as bothered with the allegation that the 2020 budget was padded as one is with the details of provisions that constituted the alleged paddings.

According to the newspaper, the excess was to accommodate such items as cooking stoves, pepper grinding machines, sewing machines, tricycles, hair dryers, motorcycles, barbing kits, wheel barrows and the like. When you see such items listed in the budget of a country as things a government must spend on in the fiscal year, you need no longer to ask questions as to why the country is still very poor. The question is, how does a serious country spend its money, earned and borrowed, on such items? How exactly does the mind of leaders work when they input items such as those in a serious budget? One may be expecting too much to think that the government itself thinks the budget a serious document. Perhaps, it does not see it.

Get my drift. I do not think that it is the business of serious-minded governments to make budgetary provisions for sewing machines, pepper grinding machines, saloon kits, etc. To my mind, they are frivolities. Serious governments should busy themselves with the provision of basic infrastructure. But this is Nigeria. Reality works differently here. Here, frivolities dominate the budget of a nation that is faced with daunting infrastructural challenges. The issue is: while government borrows money to finance the budget, it inadvertently finances frivolities and self-enriching schemes built into the budget by lawmakers. I may not know how this works in other parts of the world. I, however, do not think national budgets should finance such frivolities. Unfortunately, the budget is already law. Why it was not scrutinized, like budgets before it, may be explained away as consequence of the rush by government to achieve a January-December cycle. In the end, it would appear that, in that rush, scrutiny was sacrificed and some form of corruption was approved.

This is one aspect of corruption that Nigeria must find answers to. A few years back, a certain chairman of the appropriation committee of the House of Representatives, singlehandedly vired funds appropriated for infrastructural developments in parts of the country into providing what he described as empowerment for his constituents. On his shopping list included hair dressing kits, sewing machines, tricycles, motorcycles, pepper grinding machines, wheel barrows and the likes.

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The said lawmaker also included a community hall in his list. These items were to be paid for from the federal budget. But for the controversy generated by the illegal virements, they had passed as constituency projects. Often, we see lawmakers returning to their communities to share such items like they were off his/her pockets. Not many know that those items were paid for by Nigeria’s tax payers.

Somehow, Nigeria is ‘blessed’ with lawmakers who make laws that they must benefit from. Laws, in normal climes, are made for the good governance of society. Where they are made for personal privileges, they become corruptive and add no value towards the growth of society. As it is, there are pressing needs that Nigeria’s lawmakers care less about: upgraded classrooms, car worthy roads, stable electricity, water, equipped and functional hospitals, safer and effective ports, effective transport system, security of lives and investments, human capital development and a whole lot. Those ought to be the focus. That’s where the money Nigeria so freely borrows should go to.

What this may mean is that for the war on corruption to be more impactful and become institutionalized, the searchlight must beam on the appropriation act passage process at the National Assembly. President Muhammadu Buhari’s desire to have a NASS that kowtows and approves every of his request; one that makes him happy with quick passage of his requests in satisfaction of his abhorrence of democratic norms of legislative oversight which may be slow, creates opportunity for the possibility of padding. It also creates opportunity for lawmakers to build into such requests items which the country ought not to pay for. If NASS members desire to return to their constituencies with such item, they should buy and share such things from their legitimate earnings. That is what giving back to constituents/community connotes. Taking advantage of the law making process to inject such items into the budget of the country is outrightly criminal and ought to be seen and punished as such.

Therefore, for Nigeria to move away for the phenomenon of budget padding, there must be deeper scrutiny of the appropriation act before it is signed into law by the President, at least, to ensure that lawmakers did not pad it with the sort of frivolities listed by premiumtmesng.com as what the jerk up cost of the budget will cater for. To my mind, that is a surer way to ensure that the appropriation act was not enacted for the direct benefit of lawmakers, their assigns and godfathers.