Thank God the President has finally signed the budget despite concerns on the NASS’s insertions and excisions. As before, arguments back and forth on why the delay and whether or not the NASS has the power to unilaterally tinker with the budget ensued. The Nigerian people are certainly not enjoying this. As a way of resolving these issues amicably and never letting them happen in future the NASS can:
1. make a programme of budget consideration including a schedule(date & time for each agency) of budget defense by the various agencies of government and make it public, in fact open a website for it accessible by all Nigerians. This site should be updated with texts, pictures and videos regularly.
2. make attendance and defense public so that Nigerians will know which agencies are not in compliance, and which ones have not made a good defense. This will also help to check the claims of bribe for budget approval.
Punishment for government agencies that fail to appear on schedule or appear but fail to make a good defense of the budget they submitted should be clearly spelt out by the executive beforehand. Such punishments, whenever applied, should be made public.
On the unilateral tinkering of the budget, I think the FGN should seek decision from the court.
However they do it, Nigerians do not want these arguments and delays anymore.
