Yet another extension

Written by Sola Shittu,Tel:2348038502103
(Text only please) e: solasitu@yahoo.co.uk


It is the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance
It is the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance
It is the one who won’t be taken who cannot seem to give
And the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live
– Don Williams

The above lines are quoted from one of the songs of Don Williams, a legendary American country music musician noted for his deep thought in composing songs. Actually the title of the song is Rose, a vivid description of the story of love and the pains attached with it. It is also an encapsulating song that started with just one cord from the piano in a geo-metric progression that later resulted into a perfect harmony with other instruments and embellishment that brought out the aesthetics of country music. It’s definitely not a lazy man’s job. But my concern today is not really music and its beauty, though my life and indeed many African lives are not completed without music in the day. But my attention was drawn into those particular four lines having watched closely events in the Senate of the National Assembly in the last few years where budget extension has become a recurrent decimal in our national affair. And that is where the theme of fears that appeared boldly in three of the four lines and silently in the second to the last line comes to mind. It is as if our leaders are bedeviled by the fears or lack of courage to stand up at least for once and say enough is enough for the ship of this nation from drifting and tossing about in the storming ocean of politics and mal-administration of this country. You say what do I mean? Take for instance this issue of virement. Obviously for those of us in the National Assembly, the foundation has been laid for virement of the 2011 budget just as it is been laid already for the 2012 budget. For how can one explain a situation where the President is presenting the budget for the New Year at the middle of the last month of the year to the National Assembly? Definitely, before the National Assembly commences consideration of it and the defence by the MDAs it is going to take another two months. And after that the joint committees of the two chambers of National Assembly will sit for harmonisation which will take another round of lobbying both internal and external in the National Assembly and of course with tension already mounting on government’s plans to remove the fuel subsidy by January next year only God knows how long it will take to pass the budget in the National Assembly without distraction from the public, labour and civil societies already poised for a show down with government on the planned removal of fuel subsidy. For the past five years, our budget has been subject of extension from one fiscal year to another and yet consistently with less than fifty or sometime forty percent implementation. Last week the National Assembly endorsed the extension of the 2011 budget till March 2011 through virement proposals from Mr. President in respect of the 2011 Appropriation Act for nine MDAs.
How long will it take our leaders to wake up from their slumber and lift their feet to the sweet melody of change going on in the air from Nigerians yearning and desperately hungry for true development? Our government is rather too involved in politicking than governance. Every year the budget performance is always poor and below the average line and yet a lot of money have gone down the drain of recurrent expenditure. On Thursday, the Senate was categorical on this, as it called on the executive to ensure that it returned excess recurrent to the treasury.
Senate Appropriation committee chairman while presenting his report on the virement to the senate said, “we find it difficult to recommend for approval the virement proposal on the 2011 recurrent budget as requested by the executive,” even as he gave condition that “even if a request for extension of the current budget is made it will only affect capital component”.
It was at this juncture that he spilled the bin on the discovery of irregular transfer of funds among the ministries. The senator said virement should be carried out within MDAs and not the transfer of funds from one ministry to another which amounts to alteration of the 2011 Appropriation act if it is approved.
While joining the House of Representatives in approving the sum of N31, 859,945,730 supplementary appropriations on the virement proposals, the senate said it was reluctant in approving the virement because it’s just about three weeks to the end of the fiscal year.
Now let me come back to the Don Williams’ poem above as it relates to our country Nigeria. The chicken-hearted ones are always afraid to take steps that will change their destinies for two reasons. First is the fear of failure. When a man is caged by fear, he would not want to make bold move because of the thought that he might fail and secondly because he paid too much attention to side comments of spectators some of whom are consciously waiting for him to berth. The second reason for fear is the fear of coping with challenges of failure, which are probably too hard for the defeated to swallow. In this case, if we fail to destroy our fears and face the problems of nation building then we remain in the cocoon of the failures that had a humpty dumpty fall and never recovered again. It is the dream fear of waking that never takes chance. For a man to be complete Homo sapiens, he must take the full course of life. The same applies to a nation that fails to take a chance when the opportunity comes. If Nigeria as a country continues to have carry-over of every fiscal year, then it means we are having chicken-hearted leaders who are afraid of dying and never learn to live.

END