By Ezrel Tabiowo and Taiye Odewale
Abuja
The Speaker of House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu and Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal have called for amendment of the nation’s constitution to create a three to six months time frame within which the budget must be presented to the National Assembly.
This, they said, would give the National Assembly sufficient time to pass the budget and ensure that the implementation runs from January 1st to December 31, as stipulated in the Financial Year Act, 1980.
Speaking at a programme on “Reforming the Budgetary Process in Nigeria” in Abuja yesterday, they argued that the budget time frame be included in the constitution to guide both the Executive and Legislative arms of government.
Specifically, Ekweremadu said whatever reforms that must be carried out in the budgetary process must address the time frame for submission of the appropriation bill.
He buttressed his argument with what obtains in the United States of America where the legislature has a period of between eight to 10 months to consider the American budget.
“Technically we have only one day to consider the budget because under the constitution, the President can present the budget on the last day of December and you expect budget to start the first day of January. So, that means you have less than 24 hours to pass it.
While saying that the budget proposal be subjected to public scrutiny, the lawmaker said late submission of budget has made it difficult for the document to undergo public hearing, a situation he lamented made Nigeria to rank very low in worldwide rating of budgetary process.
Although the proposal went through budget defence, the Deputy Senate President insisted that this should not be misconstrued for public hearing.
He added: “I attended a UN workshop in 2012 and the issue of budget came up. There was a statistics on the rating of the budgetary process of various countries. Nigeria was one of the least rated. The reason is that we are one of the few countries that did not subject our budget to public hearing.
“What usually happens is that members of the committee and their chairmen invite the MDAs to come and defend their budget. That does not amount to public hearing. So, there is no bill that is as important as the appropriation bill. If there is any bill that requires public hearing, it is the appropriation bill. But because it does not come on time, we find it extremely difficult to subject it to public hearing”.
It would be recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari submitted the budget to a joint session of the National Assembly on December 22, 2015, while he assented to the document in May this year.
Although the 7th National Assembly amended the 1999 Constitution to reduce the period within which unspent funds were spent from six months to three months, former President Goodluck Jonathan refused to sign it into law, citing constitutional breaches.
