A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF CORRUPTION IN BUDGET ADMINISTRATION IN NIGERIA (1999 – 2007) Part 1 By Joseph Don

MEANING OF CORRUPTION

The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English sees corruption as “dishonest, illegal or immoral behaviour especially from someone with power.”  The Encyclopaedia of Social Science (2^nd ed) defines corruption as “the perversion or abandonment of a standard. Black’s Law Dictionary defines corrupt practice as “…an impairment of integrity, virtue or moral practice, especially, the impairment of a public official’s duties by bribery”.  It is the official use of a station or office to procure some benefit either personally or for someone else, contrary to the right of others.” (Newswatch, Oct. 6, 2008:29).

One common feature in each of the definitions cited above is “immoral behaviour” derogatively referred to as “perversion and impairment”. Implicitly  when a public official, for instance, engages in giving and collecting bribe before or after an official duty, corruption is said to have taken place. For instance, in the 4^th Republic, the Chief Executive had had a cause to sack an education minister because of allegation of bribery involving the minister and the Senate. Little wonder does one believe that it is the most popular form of big corruption in government is the inflation of contracts, in order to receive kick-backs. For example, top Government functionaries and Chief Executives are usually the culprits. In this way, hundreds of millions of Naira of funds are diverted into private pockets … that within a space of four years there were government officials who became millionaires.

It is in this vein that the World Bank defines corruption as the abuse of public office for private gains. The Agency believes that public office is abused through rent seeking activities for private gain when an official accepts, solicits or extorts a bribe. It as well opines that public office is abused when private agents actively offer bribes to circumvent public policies and processes for competitive advantage and profit. 

 Opinions are that if budget projections were expended according to pre-determined objectives, infrastructure such as energy would, by now, improved the living standard of the average Nigerian. Rather, “… payments are approved and paid for contracts which are never executed.

 From the perspective of Asian Development Bank, Corruption is seen as the behaviour of public … officers who improperly and unlawfully enrich themselves and /or those closely related to them, or induce others to do so.

 Discoveries of corruption occurrences in Nigeria tend to make the above definitions quite significant. For instance, in SCROLL, July 14, 2008:12, a Managing Director of Africa Finance Corporation in the 4^th Republic is alleged to have diverted for private use, money budgeted for the up-keep of the organisation, the sum of three million, five hundred and forty thousand as well as eleven million seven hundred thousand naira. In a related development, two former ministers who served in the Aviation Ministry within the period under review were alleged to have misappropriated the sum of N19.5 billion budgeted for aviation intervention fund. (ThisDay, Oct. 8, vol. 5, No. 4918, 2008). Still within the period, out of $16 billion earmarked for the power sector between 1999-2007, $142m was alleged to have been siphoned for private gain by the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN. (Daily Independent, March 14, vol.3 No 1440, 2008:1) We hold the view that if the misused money, as it were, were spent judiciously and for the reason it was budgeted for, the power sector, as well as others, would have had significant improvement on the lives of Nigerians.

   For the government to demonstrate readiness to develop infrastructure and impact on the lives of people, it must start with diligent implementation of budget. But the fact remains that budget in Nigeria has always been tilted in recent time. For instance, “for the eight years former President Olusegun Obasanjo superintended at the Aso Rock, even up till the Goodluck Jonathan's regime, the problem of non implementation of budget(or to be fair, its partial implementation) has assumed a recurrent decimal, always resulting into a stalemate between the executive and legislature.

 To be continued