The House of Representatives has initiated an alteration of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) with the view to provide for timely submission and passage of the annual budget for the country.
The bill sponsored by Hon. Ossai Nicholas Ossai, seeks to amend Section 81(1) of the Principal Act, which provides that “the President shall cause to be prepared and laid before each House of the National Assembly at any time in each financial year estimates of the revenues and expenditure of the Federation for the next following financial year.”
As expressed in the Explanatory Memorandum, the “Bill seeks to ensure that proposed budgets are passed into law before the beginning of every year on the first day of January as provided in Section 318 of the Constitution.
“It also aims at ensuring that the Executive arm of government does not spend federation money for too long without currently being appropriated by the two Houses of the National Assembly to reflect the reality time.”
As stipulated in the proposed bill seen by Tribune Online, the proponent of the amendment explained that: “Section 81 Sub-Section (1) of the Principal Act is altered by deleting the entire Sub-Section (1) and replacing same with another Sub-section (1) of Section 81, which says, thus:
“The President shall not later than three months to the end of each financial year cause to be prepared and laid before each House of the National Assembly estimates of revenues and expenditures of the federation for the next following financial year.”
He also seeks to alter Section 82 of the Principal Act by deleting the figure ‘six’ immediately after the word ‘exceeding’, and substituting the figure ‘six’ with the figure ‘three’.
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Previous efforts made by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to return was stalled by frozy relationship between the leadership of the 8th Assembly as well as late submission of the budget estimates to the joint session of the National Assembly.
Analysts have frowned against successive administrations’ failure to adhere to the various extant financial regulation laws including the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007.
The Part II Section 11 (1) of the Fiscal Responsibility Act mandates Federal Government to prepare and lay submit the Medium Term Expenditure Framework not later than six months, before the National Assembly, for their consideration for the next three financial years; and (b) thereafter, not later than four months before the commencement of the next financial year, cause to be prepared a Medium-Term Expenditure Framework for the next three financial years.
Section 11 (2) further provides that the framework so laid shall be considered for approval with such modifications if any, as the National Assembly finds appropriate by a resolution of each House of the National Assembly, while subsection (3) states that the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework shall contain: (a) a Macro-economic Framework setting out the macro-economic projections, for the next three financial years, the underlying assumptions for those projections and an evaluation and analysis of the macroeconomic projections for the preceding three financial years.
The debate on the bill which has been gazetted for Second Reading is expected to commence on resumption from the annual two months recess and if supported by members will be referred to the Special Ad-hoc Committee on Constitution Review chaired by the Deputy Speaker, Hon. Idris Wase.
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