An Exploratory Evaluation of Legislative Lawlessness in the Nigerian Budget Process

Abstract

The public sector budget in Nigeria, as in any other nation of the world, remains the most important policy thrust instrument or tool for different purposes including: economic, political, social and developmental. The Nigeria Federal budget has been facing a myriad of challenges dispossessing it of the powers to achieve its expected goals. Those problems include institutional, social and leadership dimensions. The unbridled legislative over-bearing role in the Federal budget process is one of the emerging and festering institutional challenges causing budget failure in Nigeria. Such abuse by the legislature includes: tempering with budget benchmarks, agency victimization, inserting foreign projects and late passage. This exploratory paper takes an in-depth look into these lawless legislative practices in the Nigeria budget process, the problems it has added to poor budget impact on the economy such as: delay in budget passage, nitpicking oversight function, executive and legislative imbroglio and distorted budget policy framework. The paper concludes by making impeccable suggestions on how to curtail the