BUDGETARY CONTROL MECHANISM IN NIGERIA AND THE IMPLICATION OF BUDGET IMPLEMENTATION ON NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

This study assessed Budgetary Control mechanism in Nigeria and the implication of budget implementation on National development. This study found that the existing budget mechanism is significantly effective to attain better performance, though stakeholders on budget implementation differs on the perceived extent of compliance showing there has not been full compliance with the application of budget mechanism. Actually budgetary control, its mechanism and its implementation affects National development greatly.


INTRODUCTION
            Government at all level prepare and approve into law a summary of plan of the intended revenues and expenditures which are made in advance of government fiscal year concern a document called budget. It has become a routine because it is done and reviewed each year. It is an expression of government financial role in the growth process of economy.
            In Nigeria contex of public sector governance, budget preparation on annual basis has become a standard practice backed by legal provision such as the constitution and financial regulations of the various states. Studies of Lucy (2002), Lewis (2007) and Adams (2004) have shown that at both public and private sectors, budget is a pivotal means of translating the overall aims and objective of an organization into detailed packages of actions, and determining the sources and uses of funds in order to allow performance evaluation of the people who are entrusted with the resources.
            Government is held accountable to the citizenry on allocation, custody and use of the state resources through budget. The above functions are expected to be performed in accordance with established rules, polices and practices contained in the government financial regulation. Politicians, public analysts and scholars agreed that a well formulated and properly implemented budget has the capacity to promote socio-economic well- being of the people, finance economic development projects and support public service administration. In spite of the potential benefits accruable from budgeting, there is a general sleptims on budget performance in Nigeria. This is not peculiar to Nigeria alone as 85% of the governments all over the world fail to provide adequate information for the public to hold them accountable (the Guardian 2009).
            Concreted efforts are being made in Nigeria towards maximizing benefit accruable from public spending through monumental waves of budget reforms in the public sector. The needs for these reforms were necessitated by perceived in satisfactory performance when compared with the expectations of the budget provisions. Budget in public sector arise from the need to demonstrate accountability with the attendant goal of general improvement in the life of people.
            Budget affects national development through taxation. So budget have to be controlled to enhance National development.

LITERATURE REVIEW
            Different theories have been developed on public sector budgeting some of which are discussed. Bottom up theory is a normative theory of budgeting propounded, according to Tucker (1985), by the early studies of pyhur in the early 1970s. It involves the collection of all the needs or requests of the different units of an organization presented in form of estimates of funds required for their proposed activities which are summed up by the central authority to obtain the total budget for the coming fiscal year. In order words, the approach adopted in bottom up budget is best explain by zero- based-Budgeting method that starts with base of zero and calculate cost of ruming each programme from the scratch. While using the approach, each programme must be extensively reviewed to justify its inclusions in the budget.
            To down theory of budgeting emerged in 1990s as a response to fiscal crisis encountered in budget formulation. Under this theory, the central authority or top management echelon places ceiling on the resources to be made available to the units. However, efforts are made to meet undimished need of units so as to obtain a better performance from their  operation. Some of the benefits of this theory are; ease of development, challenging the accounting officer of units to formulate efficient budget by setting optimal priorities, providing early guidance to budget planner thereby reducing or eliminating the need to cut budget.
            Incremetatlism theory is a budget approach that begins with the use of previous year budget figures as the base for next budget. Factors such as inflation, growths, changing conditions and other information gathered from forecast of upcoming year are taken into account. The paper work for preparing coming year budget is simplified. However inefficiency and inadequacy of previous year are built into budget for coming years.
            Principal –Agent theory of budget occurs in public sector in various manners (Leruth and Paul, 2007). It involves specifying an observable contract between the principal and the agent. In public sector, several principal agent relationship exist. For example, a minister who can also be a political  a pointed of line ministries is a principal with the main objective of making the agents civil servants under him/her to implement his promises. Another one can be seen from the relationship between the legislature which makes sure that the government implements the government programmes.
            However, the relationship between the ministry of finance and other line ministries is the broader form for principal –agent relationship in public sector. The ministry of finance acts in the capacity of principal while supervising line ministries (agents) to ensure they produce a certain level of budget output as stated in budget. In the same manner, the office of Accountant –General serves in the capacity of agent while rendering account of stewardship the  executive to the populace who are the principal owners of the resources at the disposal of the government. From a review of the above theories on budget, it can be concluded that in public secotr, a budget is a legitmate instrument used by the federal and state government to build –up the nation.
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