Abuja — Ministers, heads of departments and chief executives of parastatals who fail to satisfactorily implement the budget by the end of the forthcoming fiscal year deserve to be penalised.

This is the resolution of the House of Representatives which yesterday passed the 2010 Appropriation Bill through the mandatory second reading but decided to insert a clause that prescribes penalties. If the proposal is allowed to sail through, it will no longer be business as usual as Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) that display lack of capacity by failing to implement the provisions of the 2010 Appropriation Act may be recommended for demotion, re-deployment or outright sack from the Federal executive Council (FEC). The lawmakers argued that given the experience of the past 10 years with regards to non-implementation of the national budget, it has become necessary to impose stiff sanctions on the executive arm of government in order to change the situation.

The House has also approved virement worth N37.689billion on the 2009 Appropriation Act for MDAs. The virement involved the transfer of funds from projects that for one reason or the other have not and are not likely to be implemented in the fiscal year in favour of projects that are already on their way to successful completion. THISDAY learnt that this may be the last virement exercise in budgeting process as the House has proposed to stop the practice because of its perceived abuse by MDAs. There was heated debate on the general principles of the 2010 Appropriation Bill, as some lawmakers felt that the provisions of the bill fell short of what was expected of a country that is seeking to join the league of the top twenty economies of the world by 2020. Speaker Dimeji Bankole reminded the various standing committees of the House of the need to intensify their oversight functions to ensure that the MDAs were put on their toes in the implementation of the 2010 Budget. According to Bankole, the current budget is critical to the political career of the lawmakers, stressing that if the electoral reform bill sails through and elections are conducted six months to the expiration of the current government, there will be some serious implications for the polity.

"When we pass the amendment to the Electoral Act, that means all elections will be conducted by November next year and that means that all nominations will be concluded by August. We have eight months to prove ourselves and if you as a committee have anything you can do to make these MDAs deliver on the budget, you better do it now," Bankole said. Deputy Minority Leader, Honourable Abdulrahman Suleiman Kawu took the floor and urged the House to reject the 2010 Budget proposal because,in his view, it failed to address national priorities in critical sectors of power, road infrastructure and security.

Kawu, a member of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) representing the Sumaila/Takai Federal Constituency of Kano State, described the attitude of the Presidency towards budgeting as "executive rascality", insisting that given the trend over the past years, the poor results recorded with the 2009 budget will likely repeat itself. In their separate assessment of the budget proposal, Hono-urables Gbenga Oduwaiye, Chinyere Igwe, Leo Ogor and Patricia Etteh agreed that the budget was comprehensive but expressed fears on the capacity of the MDAs to deliver. They said the current budget coming just before the crucial elections in 2011, should have been tailored to enhance the attainment of one or two specific goals of the Seven-Point Agenda. Minority Whip and Action Congress Leader in the House, Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila however hit the nail on the head when he remarked that the budgeting process in the country had degenerated to a "mere ritual" and argued that work on the current budget will be incomplete without the insertion of an additional clause on implementation.

"The Appropriation Act is a law and every law that requires efficacy in its observance must have penalties. We need a clause in this bill that will impose sanctions on non-implementation otherwise we will come back here next year to talk about thirty per cent implementation," he said. Gbajabiamila who also picked holes on the provisions for statutory transfer, debt servicing and the petroleum subsidy, said the N600billion which the Federal Government claimed it spends on subsidising the importation and distribution of petroleum products in previous years should have been captured as additional source of funds since the government plans to deregulate and scrap subsidy. In spite of the misgivings on the budget, the lawmakers voted that it should pass the second reading and was subsequently committed to the Joint Committee on Finance and Appropriation.

The duo of Honourable Sani Saleh Minjibir and Honourable Ahmad Wadada argued that given the government's professed commitment to vision 2020, the so called stimulus budget should have been slanted to serve as investments in the economy by addressing issues such as, provision of key infrastructure, interest rate reduction, regenerating the productive sector and creating jobs for the army of unemployed Nigerians. Deputy Speaker Usman Nafada exonerated the parliament from the menace of poor budget implementation and blamed it on the low capacity of the MDAs to discern the priority projects that should be included in the budget for maximum effects. He said that in the course of considering the 2009 Budget, the House made a startling discovery of the inclusion of N30billion for some road projects that had already been executed as far back as 2004 in the North East geo-political zone. He also exonerated the National Assembly from complicity over the non-performance of the budget in the Ministry of Niger Delta, insisting that those in charge of the MDAs were to blame.