There are strong indications that President Bola Tinubu’s late presentation of the 2025 appropriation bill to the National Assembly would alter the January – December budget cycle.
The January – December budget cycle was introduced by the 9th National Assembly during the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari as a strategy for enhancing budget performance, unlike the June-May cycle, which lasted until the 2019 appropriation.
During the transition process, the then-Senate President and Chairman of the National Assembly, Senator Ahmad Lawan, said that the June-May cycle created problems for planning and adequately implementing the country’s macroeconomic framework.
“We believe that if we can do that, our budget will go back to that regular cycle, that desirable cycle of January to December and that will enhance the budget performance of this country,” Lawan had said.
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Though the House of Representatives and the Senate passed the 2025-2027 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and the Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP) last week, it is still unclear when President Tinubu will present the 2027 budget estimates to a joint session of the legislature.
At the end of this week, the National Assembly will have one week to adjourn for Christmas celebrations, even if it reconvenes to pass the budget on December 30, 2024, for presidential assent on January 1, 2025, to maintain the existing cycle, committees may not do a thorough job.
Tinubu presented the 2024 budget before a joint session of the National Assembly on November 29, 2023, and it was passed on December 30 (approximately one month later).
At the presentation, he asked the National Assembly to pass this year’s (2024) budget before December 31 to keep up with the January-December budget cycle.
“I am confident that the National Assembly will continue to work closely with us to ensure that deliberations on the 2024 budget are thorough and concluded with reasonable dispatch. Our goal is for the Appropriation Act to take effect on the 1st of January 2024,” the president had urged.
However, with just about 20 days to the end of the year, it appears the National Assembly will hardly have enough time for thorough budget defence sessions with the country’s 541 ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs).
Usually, after the budget presentation, the Appropriation Bill is listed for second reading so that members of the House of Representatives can debate its general principles. The Senate follows a similar process.
After that, the bill (budget) is referred to the Committee on Appropriations, from which the various standing committees engage the MDAs they supervise in budget defence sessions.
After the budget defence sessions, the standing committees compile their reports and send them to the Appropriations Committee, which checks, among other things, that each MDA is within its budget envelope.
The chairmen of these standing committees also defend their sessions with MDAs by interacting with the National Assembly’s appropriation committees. Subsequently, the Appropriation Committee presents its harmonised report during plenary for consideration and passage.
Nigerians may not have witnessed these processes, checks, and balances in the 2015 budget.
Worried by the consequences of a late budget presentation, the House had urged the President Tinubu-led executive arm of government to comply with Section 11(1)(b) of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007, and submit the 2025 budget proposal to the National Assembly without further delay in mid-October.
That followed the adoption of a motion of urgent public importance moved by the member representing Abak/Ika/Etim Ekpo Federal Constituency of Akwa Ibom State, Hon. Clement Jimbo, at plenary on Wednesday.
Moving the motion, Jimbo said the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 in section 11(1) (b) stipulated that the federal government must, not later than four months before the commencement of the next financial year, cause to be prepared and laid before the National Assembly a Medium Term Expenditure Framework(MTEF) for the next three financial years.
The lawmaker expressed worry that the time the National Assembly required to exercise its functions as provided by the law was technically being taken away by the executive’s non-compliance with section 11(1)(b) of FRA 2007.”
LEADERSHIP recalls that the 9th Assembly took steps to give legal backing to the January-December budget cycle when the House passed, in 2021, a bill to regulate the planning, preparation, passage, and execution of the Federal Government of Nigeria’s budget for second reading.
Sponsored by the present Speaker, Hon. Abbas Tajudeen (APC, Kaduna), the proposed legislation sought to define the budget cycle and timeline for each stage of the appropriation process, among others.
In a lead debate on the bill’s general principles, Abbas said it intended to ensure that the January 1 to December 31 timeline be embedded in the Act as the sacrosanct period within which every budget in the federation should be formulated.
Efforts to get the reaction of the House of Representatives were futile as the deputy spokesperson had not responded to questions sent to his via his phone by the time of filing this report.
2024 budget may be given leeway – Senate
Speaking on the delay surrounding the 2025 budget, the Senate has said that the 2024 budget may be given a leeway to run for the first three months of 2025.
According to the Senate, they already have a position a plan to handle the delayed budget presentation.
Speaking to LEADERSHIP yesterday, Senate spokesman Yemi Adaramodu said the lawmakers had informed the executive arm of government to do a thorough job before bringing the appropriation bill to the National Assembly.
Adaramodu, who said the tax reform bill issues are not the reason behind the delay in budget presentation, added that they had passed the MTEF/ FSP, which is the most important in a budget cycle.
“It will later be what it used to be,” Adaramodu said, referring to the leeway they may be giving to the 2024 budget to operate in the first quarter of 2025.
“There is a position; the current budget can still be given three months’ leeway.
We passed a supplementary budget this year and had to harmonise them. But we don’t want it to happen as it happened the other time because it was a transition year.
“We’ve informed the executive to do a thorough job on the 2025 appropriation bill so that when it gets to us, we work on it fast,” Adaramodu said.
Adaramodu said the delay in the budget presentation had nothing to do with the four tax reform bills under review.
“The budget is an estimate, and the tax bills will pave the way for more revenues and block leakages,” he said.
