THE Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial standard bearer for Taraba State, Senator Emmanuel Bwacha, says the introduction of budget padding in the country’s media space has helped to cover corruption in budgeting, saying that Nigerians need to take greater interest and involved in budget formulation.

He explained that when legislators bring in constituency projects, the projects are meant to reflect the needs of their constituency and the federal government gives the legislators that privilege, because they know that they are in touch with the grassroot outside of the budget office, which is part of the Executive Arm of government.

Bwacha, who spoke to The Guardian in an exclusive interview, maintained that what lawmakers do is to bring to bear in the budget process the wishes of their people, adding that this forms what they call budget padding in the Nigerian media space.

While dismissing the notion that constituency projects represents padding, the for three-term member of the National Assembly remarked that it has nothing to do with padding, since according to him, because the work of budgeting which is an exclusive work of the parliament, includes preparation and approval of a budget.

His words: “The estimate can be prepared by the executive, and the legislature approves it. And where they see there is an amendment they can’t do, because that is within their powers. Well, I don’t understand what is padding. Although in the Nigerian media space, it is associated with budget corruption and the role of the parliamentarians.

“But, let me make this clear. By my experience in the National Assembly, I do not know anything that is called budget padding. I know that there are inputs that come from legislators who are with the rural people, who represent the constituencies across the landscape.”

He stressed that transparency in the execution of constituency projects could be achieved in a variety of ways, noting that it is rightly the duty of the executive to do that through the anti-corruption agencies that monitor it, including the ICPC (Independent Corrupt Practices Commission) and the EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission).

Shedding more light through his personal experience, Bwacha recalled that ample, when issues came up about his own constituency project, the ICPC went into investigation and found that he paraded some of the best constituency projects among the National Assembly members.

He regretted that since the citizens are not carried along in the budgeting process, the outcome may not yield any result.

“You asked, how can the citizens be carried along in budgeting? You start from a feasibility study, to ascertain what are the needs of the communities. What do they need? You have specific individuals that you assign to carry out this- that is the work of the budget department, by the way.

“So, if this is done, you see that what is reflected in the budget is the wishes of the people. And that is inclusive budgeting, because the people are carried along.  But, if a feasibility study or opinion poll is not carried out, then you will end up putting what will suit your interests as a leader, because you have a mindset that you want to steal.

“You can budget for anything that is not even needed. And at the end of the day, that thing might not even be done, or the project might not be executed, but the money will be paid. This is what we are witnessing in the state.

“I know of a particular incident in my state, Taraba, where a particular item was captured in the budget and the money was paid, but the project was not executed. But, because we are gathering these facts, we don’t want to give the government an opportunity to go and do some dirty works. We will unveil them at the fullness of time.

“So, there are instances like this, money taken away, project not executed and this is what has caused a lot of failure in the budgeting process, particularly in my own state-Taraba. At the National Assembly, there are processes we adopted. Sometimes it’s not as if it’s a perfect process, because at the larger scale, too, we need to learn some things as we move along, because we learn from past mistakes. And these errors have been noticed.

“I believe there must be improvement as we go along. But, in my own state, the story is that we are even yet to start crawling. While we are walking here in Abuja, down there, at the state level, we haven’t started crawling,” he narrated.