Lagos — THE House of Representatives, under the speakership of Dimeji Bankole, is to enforce compliance with budgetary provisions by ministers. This, according to him, will be carried out through the mechanism of the House's oversight function.

He spoke as the Minister of State for Finance, Mr. Remi Babalola, said the Federal Government would hold ministers accountable for the poor implementation of the budget.

Speaker Bankole and Oversight Function

Speaker Bankole at a breakfast meeting with editors in Lagos, said the House of Representatives was revved up to take its oversight function seriously with a view to providing Nigerians with the dividends of democracy.

"The most important agenda I can think of at the moment is one which delivers the dividends of democracy. I would not stand before you and couch any flowery phrase; that would just be a showpiece," he said.

"What we are ready to do in the House is to take our oversight function more seriously. Once that can be achieved, Nigerians would feel that agenda. The issue of committee restructuring is very vital before it has to lock into the overall objective for which the House of representatives was set up.

"The objective is that we provide the dividends of democracy to the people of Nigeria. One of the ways we are going to do that is by ensuring that the committees in the House of Reps are up and doing.

"On the issue of restructuring the committees, it is very important. In the House, there is a Selection Committee in place. That committee is made up of all the principal officers, majority and minority leaders and members chosen from zones. For the committees to do their work effectively, the selection of members of the other committees must be thorough.

"In the House, we operate a Medium Term Expenditure profile. This profile has a three-year span. It is broken into years, quarters and then months.

"For example, the Committee on National Planning has a responsibility to look into the activities of the National Planning Ministry. It is from that premise of planning that other ministries take their cue. The other committees saddled with the responsibility of overseeing other ministries then take it up from there and perform their oversight function.

"It is when the committees do what they are supposed to do by performing their oversight functions on the ministries that we can begin to say we're making progress.

"What the committees do is to look into the activities of the ministries on a quarterly basis and then observe. Whatever they observe, based on performance or slipshod write to the ministries asking questions regarding their level of performance.

"This is against what used to happen before where ministers provide information to the National Assembly. That is the way we intend to operate now and provide the dividends of democracy to members of the public.

"What we are looking at in the House is a situation whereby we lead the agenda. Since we have chosen corporate governance as a mode of practice, it encompasses all the other issues because it creates a basis of engagement.

He also said the residence of the Speaker should be renovated by the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) and that there was a committee on the Federal Capital Territory which should do its job.

However, the Minister of State in an interactive session with the House Committees on Finance and Petroleum Upstream said plans were also afoot to have Global Systems Mobile Telephony (GSM) companies pay heavy tax, commensurate with what they earn, soon.

"We are sending monthly expenditure for capital and recurrent budgets for 2008 to the ministries, to give them updates. So, every minister is going to be held responsible for the poor implementation of the budget," Babalola told the Committee on Finance.

Ministers to give account on budget - Babalola

Fielding questions from a cross-section of members of the Committee on Finance, Babalola recalled that the Executive had a few days after the presentation of the budget to the joint session of the National Assembly, "held a meeting with all the ministers on the need for them to ensure the (2008) budget is implemented as approved by the National Assembly."

He regretted that regimes in the past tinkered with budgets and at the end implemented less than even 50 percent, what he observed has held down every aspect of the economy.

"We witnessed what happened in the past, where budgets were never implemented, not even 30 per cent of the last budget was implemented, and that is what has brought us to where we are today, so the difference between this (2008) budget and other budgets would be in its implementation." He assured.

Babalola, a former First Bank Executive Director, while answering questions on the benchmark of $53.8 per barrel of crude oil for 2008 budget, recalled that though he was challenged by the Central Bank Governor, Professor Chukwuma Soludo, on the basis for pegging the national budget on that percentage, he believed it was the most realistic for now, until government ensured a reasonable stability in the Niger Delta region, where crude production is routinely interrupted by militants.

According to the minister, as long as crude oil continued to be the mainstay of the country's economy, benchmarks for budgets would continue to fluctuate, according to production levels, as "crude oil is the most dicey commodity in the international market."

On the Niger Delta, he said the 80 per cent of the money allocated for security in the region would be set aside for health care and education, but added that what was important was whether the line of expenditure could be sustained in the following years.

"What we are discussing is not 2008 budget. It is what would affect the future of this country. We either go right or left.

The direction we are is going to affect the Niger Delta positively. We are going to use 80 per cent to provide health care and education, but what happens the year after is what we should be focussing on," he said.

Tax evasion by telecoms coys

Babalola said telecommunication companies had not been paying adequate tax because of what he described a "pioneer-period" when companies are expected to be stable before they begin proper tax payment.

"These telecoms companies, like MTN, GLOBACOM, etc were not paying taxes in the past because of what we called pioneer-period. They were new in the country so we needed to let them stabilise first.

We have been hearing excuses from them that they are not making money, because of one problem or the other but we know they are making money. Well, let them be making all the billions, but we would soon begin to ask for our taxes from them, just be patient," he assured committee members.