ANALYSIS: Despite poor allocations to health, education, lawmakers want 20% of national budget for constituency projects

FEDERAL lawmakers are asking for at least 20 per cent of Nigeria’s annual budget to compulsorily be spent on constituency projects.

This is coming at a time when the country has yet to make good on similar commitments to improving budgetary allocations to education, health, and food production.

In November, the Constituency Projects (Budgetary) Provisions Bill was introduced on the floor of the Senate, and last Wednesday it scaled through the second reading.

The bill, sponsored by Stella Oduah, senator representing Anambra North, seeks to speed up development in rural communities and give legal backing to the constituency project tradition.

“If not for these projects, majority of federal constituencies would not have a single federal project due to lopsided nature of project allocation in the budget,” the lawmaker argued, with support from Deputy Chief Whip Sabi Abdullahi.

“This bill, therefore, is an attempt at providing both institutional and legislative framework for the operation of constituency projects in Nigeria, thereby making it part of our national budget.”

Oduah had, without success, tried to get a similar bill passed in 2016 as a member of the eighth National Assembly. According to former Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, the history of constituency projects started as far back as 2007 when late President Umaru Yar’Adua agreed to give lawmakers N100 billion annually from the budget. They would then determine what projects to fund with the money.

These projects have, however, been repeatedly described as a conduit for corruption. If the Anambra senator’s bill becomes law this time around, it means what Nigeria coughs up for them could rise from N100 billion to N2.1 trillion (20 per cent of the 2020 budget of N10.6 trillion). This is a whopping increase of over 2000 per cent and roughly equals Nigeria’s entire capital releases for the 2018 budget year.

Notably, lesser or equal demands from international treaties to which Nigeria is signatory, pertaining to crucial sectors such as education and health, have not been satisfied by the Federal Government.

15 per cent of annual budget for health unmet
Member-countries of the African Union, in April 2001, met in Abuja and, through the Abuja Declaration, committed to allocating a minimum of 15 per cent of their annual budgets for the improvement of the health sector.

But Nigeria, the host of the declaration, has remained a “perpetual defaulter” of this pledge, with budgetary allocations to the health sector over the years hovering between 4 and 6 per cent.

In the 2019 fiscal year, N365.7 billion was proposed for the health sector, representing only 4.1 per cent of the total national budget. As a result of this under-funding, the country has continuously been ranked low on various health indices such as infant mortality and life expectancy.

The amount allocated to the health ministry, in the proposed 2020 budget, dropped to 3.7 per cent and would be 4.1 per cent if the N44.5 billion meant for the Basic Health Care Fund is included.

READ MORE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/analysis-despite-poor-allocations-to-health-education-lawmakers-want-20-of-national-budget-for-constituency-projects/

These Legislators will finish nigeria.