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Impeachment Threat: FG Can’t Achieve 100% Budget Implementation by September – Okonjo Iweala

By on July 26, 2012

Coming on the heels of the impeachment threat issued to President Jonathan by the House of Representatives, the Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, has stated unequivocally that the Executive cannot achieve 100% budget implementation by September.

The House of Representatives had threatened the Presidency to achieve the feat or risk being removed from office. The impeachment threat has taken up a life of its own with many observers keen to see how the imbroglio will play out in the political theatre.

Speaking to State HOuse correspondents in Abuja yesterday, the Minister said no country in the world is ever able to achieve 100% budget implementation in any given fiscal year. She also stated categorically that the Executive would achieve 80% to 90% budget implementation by year end and called the September deadline an unrealistic time schedule.

She said, “First, in my experience worldwide, there is hardly any country where you would implement 100 per cent even by the end of the year and this is based on very broad experience.

“But people try to get at least to 80 per cent to 90 per cent of the budget by September, you know September is the ninth month of the year, we will definitely be moving towards the figure.

“I think the point is that Mr President is determined to implement this budget as fully as possible and, therefore, we will be moving towards 90 per cent by the end of the year because the budget was made for the whole year.

“So you can see that there is no lack of effort, no lack of goodwill. If we could go from 39 per cent in May to 56 per cent by mid July, that shows a considerable leap and I’m quite confident that as we go month by month, we will be able to look at it and say yes a good effort has been made for the country.”

She added: “As you know, we have released about N404billion so far, cashed back N324billion and the utilisation of that is 56 per cent. We will soon be considering the release of the third quarter funds, we hope to do that within the next two weeks or so.

“We do face a couple of challenges that we have also been working with the National Assembly on, effectively and quietly, we have been working with them on a couple of these challenges.

“The first is, of course, many of the constituency projects and new projects put into the budget needs to be designed and to have feasibility studies because they are new and of course, this takes a little bit of time for the MDAs to begin the process of procurement which also takes time.

“To follow the law and you follow the way that the projects are implemented, that takes a little bit of time to get the design of a new project, to get the feasibility study and so on. We are very committed to getting this project done; you can’t really begin the implementation of a project before you have a feasibility study.

“Second is that there are some moves within the budget, during the time that the budget was considered by the National Assembly, they did move some resources from one category to the other in comparison to what the Executive had presented. And we have been working with them quietly and effectively to try and make sure that those resources are moved into areas where ministers can actually implement.”

Many observers are of the opinion that the HOuse will be unable to carry out its threat as for an impeachment process to be successful it requires both chambers of the National Assembly to consent to it and the Judiciary must also agree.

One Comment

  1. God Bless Nigeria

    July 26, 2012 at 10:07 am

    well spoken madam. May God Bless you