John Abayomi
4 January 2008
interview
Lagos — Kaduna State-born Saudatu Sani is a fiery individual when it comes to expressing herself on her convictions. Her contributions to debate on the floor of the House of Representatives are measured, yet pungent, a situation that has attracted to her the respect of many of her colleagues in the lower chambers of the National Assembly. A two-term lawmaker, she represents Lere Federal Constituency of Kaduna State and is the Chairman of the House Committee on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In this interview with Weekend Vanguard, she examines the obstacles militating against the proper implementation of budget in the country among other issues.
The issue of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) not coming forward to defend their budgets persists. In view of this, do you think the budget is ready to be passed in the next few weeks?
Contrary to what you have said as regard the non appearance of MDAs to defend their budget, as far as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Committee is concerned, we did not have that problem. Each ministry and parastatals we invited came. For instance, the Director General of National Action Committee on AIDS (NACA) was outside the country when he called everyone of us to explain why he was not around for the budget defense and pushed to come as fast as he could just for the budget defense. So, I don't believe there was anybody or any ministry that did not come. In fact, we had a very good budget defense. We called it a scrutiny. Every ministry and department that has enjoyed MDGs fund and are also allocated some funds for 2008 has come to defend their budget. We have finished budget defense.
What we see as a striking problem or challenge is that a lot of the ministries and parastatals have not actually utilized their money which was allocated for 2007. In fact, there is still some spending going on in the 2006 budget which I think is very big and serious challenge. There is warehousing of funds which we frown very seriously at and also there are some projects, specifically the rural roads under Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources over which about N8billion was allocated under the 2007. According to the ministry, they said they have already given out contract for the construction, but there is no visible evidence that these projects have been taken and implemented. And we have specific roads that our committee members have mentioned that have not been implemented. Then we said there is no way that the federal government can just dish out money like that.
We must be able to have discipline in budget implementation and then we must also be able to look at this Due Process as a way of ensuring that money allocated by government is being accessed bygovernment to work for the people, to work for the target group for which they are allocated.
However, we do not want the Due Process to become a problem in accessing the money. Most ministries say they have certificates from Due Process but they have not accessed the money or they are waiting for Due Process certificate. So, if from January to November Due Process certificate is not given, then what are we saying? It means we are not going to do the job. We are experiencing a scenario whereby a government ministry or parastatal will have about N200million, N300million or N600million in its own hand towards the last week of the year. I don't think that is right. We will ask the federal government, the executive to put their house in order. I don't think a situation where a ministry would access so much money towards the end of the year and leaving the work to be done is acceptable. It is either a dubious way of collecting unnecessary money or a dubious way of spending government funds without actually doing the job. We still have poor people around and MDGs is supposed to address the issue of poverty. We must put in place those strategic ways by which we can reduce poverty.
That is the reason why we had to bring the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) on board now. They were not part of these MDAs that were enjoying the Millennium Development funds. We felt that as far as poverty reduction is concerned, we have seen them perform. We know what they were able to do. They are all over the federation; they are working with the local people in skills acquisition, in jobs creation, self-reliant projects, etc. And we said why don't we try them? So, we gave them N1billion this year and we said let it be a pilot scheme and let's see what they can do and we cancelled keke NAPEP. We felt keke NAPEP is for the urban poor or for the urban privilege. I don't even know who accesses that keke NAPEP and one keke NAPEP costs N470, 000. It is easier for you to buy a small Starlet car.
Your committee is sort of new because it is the first time it is existing in the House of Representatives. How do you intend to go about achieving the goals you have set for yourself?
Actually, it is not new in the sense that every goal that you find in the Millennium Development Goals is a goal which is the primary responsibility of government. On a global scale, the goal is to reduce extreme poverty by half. Nigeria is signatory to these goals. In 2000, the world regions met and decided that something has to be done about poverty, education, health, water supply, HIVAIDS; we must do something about partnership. So, Nigeria took a position to also do something about them.
Ordinarily, if you look at what is happening in the ministries, from time immemorial from the time of the creation of this nation called Nigeria, government has always budgeted for education, government has always budgeted for health, government has always budgeted for water supply but there are specific actions that even if government had budgeted for it because of the numerous challenges in the various ministries, the ministries may not focus seriously on it. For instance, girl's education in the Ministry of Education. Government has put money to open girls' schools, to fund the education of girls but there isn't that affirmative action to say we are committing 20% of the budget to girls' education.
So, MDGs came to say if you are putting this much money on the Ministry of Education, we are giving this N13.5billion of our funds to support the education of girls. So, you see, there is now an affirmative action towards girls' education. If you go to health, there is a lot of maternal mortality and child morbidity. Children die before the age of five. We want to pay attention to areas like increase in immunization, reduction of maternal mortality, providing hospitals with obstetric care, making sure that emergency hospital services for pregnant women are free, etc. MDGs has come to say now this is the money for all those things.
So, there is a special action to promote that. Now, the parliament said all those time these parastatals have been doing this, there have been committees on health, committee on education, committee on water supply but then, there is the need to have a committee on MDGs to ensure that those monies that were given for Millennium Development Goals are also being monitored. And it is a lot of money. N110billion is a lot of money. So, that is why the House in its own wisdom felt that we needed a committee that should oversight the MDGs to ensure the proper utilization of these funds and also to ensure proper implementation of the budget is also carried out.
Apart from working with all the ministries, we will be working with all the relevant committees because I don't see us pushing other committees away. On anything that has to do with education, we will invite the Committee on Education so that we can do it together because there is only one Nigeria and the people we are intervening on their behalf are Nigerians.
So, we will make a lot of noise, we will speak to the world, we will also see how much there is in global partnership because the United Nations will say on Nigeria, we have committed so much funds but they also have their own contributions to make to Nigeria. So, how much are the other nations contributing to MDGs? If Nigeria has not committed so much, how much did other people commit? Bringing the issue of MDGs to focus is what we are going to do, ensuring that the budget of N110billion is judiciously used for MDGs, ensuring that ministries and parastatals that are receiving this money are actually doing what they are supposed to do.
In rural roads, we have had N8billion committed last year but we have a question mark on the utilization of that fund. The money has not been paid. The money has been warehoused. No work has been done with that money but it has been accessed. Money has been released to the ministry. Where is it? What happened to that money? Are we sure we don't access it? We do.
There is also some money that we are committing to complete water projects. In 2004/2005, part of the projects that National Assembly members wanted was rural water supply under the Constituency Projects. Some of us requested for boreholes, some of us requested for earth dams. Some of us were lucky. We got our contractors to do our jobs. Some were not lucky because they got their contractors, they showed up first time, second time and that was the end of it. I want to say that there are a lot of accusations by the ministries that the national Assembly members provided their own contractors. It is not true. I for one did not even know where my contractor was coming from. I did not bring any contractor but I was lucky that my contractor did my boreholes. He did all except one. Some people were not lucky. Their contractors never showed up. So, I don't know any member that introduced a contractor. We were more interested in having the job done because with those boreholes now in my constituency, everyday people drink water in my constituency and they are praying for me and that has also added to my political scores. So, getting a contractor to do the job is not our priority.
With the amount of responsibility under the MDGs, do you think the N110billion provided in 2008 will make any significant impact?
MDGs fund is derived from debt relief. Ordinarily if Nigeria was paying debt, Nigeria would have paid N110billion. Instead, of paying that debt, there was a condition attached to the money that says "don't just look at this money as an extra for you to spend. It is money that you have to commit for human development."
That was the agreement between Nigeria and the Paris Club. N110billion doesn't look much to a country like Nigeria considering the magnitude of the problem but N110billion is a lot of money coming from zero. It is also a lot of money if it is used to scale up...it is not meant to start new projects. It is meant to scale up projects which we feel adding some money would make a difference. For instance, part of the MDGs money is committed to Midwifery corps. One of the governors said "I have a beautiful hospital. I have all the equipment but I don't have the personnel." So, MDGs is now committing money to retrain some health personnel.
Some health personnel who have had some sort of training would be retrained and updated in their fields and pushed backed to the system with better knowledge. By retraining these people, you have empowered them to help improving the health system to ensure that servicing pregnant women, working with sick children is now enhanced. At the end of the day there will be reduction in maternal mortality and there will be improvement on child health.
The question of poor implementation of budget is a recurring one. Do you foresee any change this year?
Let me tell you, to be very honest, there is a lot of sincerity on the part of this president and this sincerity will eventually translate to honest implementation of the budget. So, I see a Nigeria that is willing to commit for its citizens and I see a country, a president that is willing to work for Nigeria and for Nigerians. All we have to do is work hard to fight corruption; fighting corruption from the level of the ministries that have the responsibility of implementing this budget because no matter how much the president commits on this nation, if the
ministries decide to sit on the money it is just another circle of corrupt practice which we hope andpray should not continue. So, I have a lot of hope onthe new budget and I have a lot of confidence in themain actor, that is the President and I pray that hisofficials, the ministers and their ministries will be able to do the work judiciously.
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