Why Budget Padding Occurs — Ita Enang
ABUJA— SENIOR Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters
(Senate), Senator Ita Enang, has said the
special attention being accorded
sectoral allocation in the country’s
annual budget, leaving other details in
the hands of appropriation committees of the legislature to handle and approve
for government agencies and
parastatals, was responsible for
padding. Sen. Ita-Enang Enang also faulted the re-drafting of
appropriation bills by the legal
department of the legislature, insisting
that the avenues were giving room for
padding of budgets. His position was contained in his paper
presented at Legislative Lawyers Forum,
LLF, during the just concluded 2016
Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, in Port
Harcourt, Rivers State, a copy of which
was obtained by Vanguard, in Abuja. He frowned on the manner
appropriation bills of the country were
considered and passed by the National
Assembly over the years by only
focusing on major sectoral allocations in
the budget proposals, while leaving other sectoral allocations in the hands
of appropriation committees. He said: “There is the common practice
that after bills may have been passed
by the Senate and the House of
Representatives, the legal department
now re-drafts the bills, perhaps,
changing certain words to give them a presentation in a legal draftsman’s
perfect legislative draft. This, in my
view, is inconsistent with the
provisions of the law." According to him, the practice must
stop, if padding of budget must be
brought to end. Enang in the paper presentation,
entitled "Fresh Perspectives in
Legislative Practice: Who Makes the Law,
Legislature in Session, Committees or
Legislators’ Bureaucracy? posited that
as practised in the current dispensation since June 1999, legislators’
bureaucracy and not legislature in
session made the law by making the
final draft of such laws, before
forwarding such bills already passed by
legislature in session to the President or Governor for assent through the Clerk
to the parliament.
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