allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Ministers Are Dishonest With Budget Implementation- Hon. Saudatu Sani (Page 1 of 2)

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.

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