The deplorable state of Nigeria is precisely because all our political leaders, since colonial independence in 1960, have adhered to a paradigm that prescribes the use of budgeting as a tool for managing purely financial to the neglect of institutional resources of governance. But we know that our problem is not so much how to raise and spend money but primarily how to efficiently and effectively deploy human-capacity towards the optimal performance of government in public service delivery.
Any keen observer will notice that, just as with its predecessors, since the Tinubu presidency was inaugurated on May 29, 2023, all its reform efforts have been focused on the management of financial resources. Indeed, the latest in this line of monetary reforms is the tax bill Mr President just submitted to the National Assembly. For the past 64 years, no government has made any serious effort to restructure the procedure for deploying the institutional resources of governance. This would inject institutional-coordination into the public service delivery process for continuous and holistic monitoring and evaluation of the activities of bureaucrats by elected officials. Indeed, there is no other way to guarantee that the money so raised will be spent for the purpose of improving the quality of livelihood of the citizenry.
The continued lack of institutional-coordination in our budgeting wreaks havoc on our governance. First, it discourages monitoring and evaluation needed for the aggregation and feedback of administrative-performance-information between elected officials and bureaucrats. Second, it breeds huge discretionary-authority such that both elected officials and bureaucrats possess vast decision-making powers that often conflict with the self-interests. This is why our governance lacks a proper foundation and the governments characteristically resort to:
vague, speculative and provisional fiscal forecasting;
spontaneous and sporadic administrative-decision-making; and
inability to track public spending and assess policy impacts in the light of their set objectives.
It is this scenario that breeds incentives for emergence of the unethical tendencies that impede the optimal performance of our governments in public service delivery, namely, corruption, impunity, ineptitude, fiscal-indiscipline, lack of statistical-data, and under-utilisation and wrong-deployment of specialist-workforce. In turn, these unethical tendencies condemn the mass of Nigerians to perpetual search for the basic needs of livelihood, namely, food, water, shelter, healthcare, etc. Thus, our citizenry languishes in abject penury in the midst of plenty. This is precisely why the Nigerian society is in a sorry state.
The only way to salvage this pitiful state of Nigeria is through budgetary reforms. Government must transform budgeting from its existing obsolete restricted use as fiscal policymaking fixated merely on financial-management to its contemporary broad usage as strategic planning focused on institutional-resource-management. Under the new posture, the primary concern is with efficient and effective deployment of human-capacity towards the optimal performance of government in public service delivery. This will establish a new institutional-structure that originates from the legislature through the executive and spreads out to integrate all the fields of bureaucratic activity down the agency hierarchy to the field-level of interaction with the citizenry. Thus, budgeting will become the instrument for not only laying the foundation of good governance but also nurturing the public service delivery effort to sustain the advancement of our society.
Instructively, the budgetary reform would expose our elected officials to the essential elements of good governance, thus: governance unfolds through bureaucracy that is not part of government but professional-support-group that is functionally located in-between government and the citizenry; bureaucracy is structured into different fields of activity that are managed by human beings who pursue the task from their narrow points of view and interest; and need for government to coordinate bureaucracy through constant and consistent monitoring and evaluation of the public service delivery process for the aggregation and feedback of administrative-performance-information.
From these essential elements derive the rule of good governance as, “constant and consistent monitoring and evaluation of administrative-performance for guiding continuous and holistic decision-making interaction between elected officials and bureaucrats regarding problems and successes encountered in the public service delivery process”.
The product is a new structure of public service administration that thrives on: deliberately-designed and properly-applied administrative-performance-auditing device; and effectively-controlled and fully-deployed bureaucracy.
This way, the budgetary reform will serve to eliminate all the unethical tendencies that obstruct the optimal performance of government in public service delivery. Particularly, it will eliminate corruption, impunity and ineptitude through a proactive ‘recognition’, ‘definition’ and ‘prevention’ approach when compared to the prevailing reactive ‘solution’ approach of the EFCC and ICPC. Specifically, the reform will:
sstrengthen the power of the president to checkmate the pursuit of unethical tendencies by ministers through the centralisation of executive budgetary-decision-making-authority in the Office of the President;
strengthen the power of each minister to checkmate the pursuit of unethical tendencies by bureaucrats through the centralisation of bureaucratic budgetary-decision-making-authority in the Office of the Minister; and
strengthen the power of the National Assembly over public spending through the independent capability of the legislators to do their own budgeting.
Verily, until elected officials at the three-tiers of governance in Nigeria carry out this budgetary reform, the search for good governance and elimination of the mass poverty that is ravaging our citizenry will remain mere wishful-thinking.
Dr Ejikonye is a specialist in public budgeting
https://emekaejikonye.academia.edu/
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