After a hiatus over the holidays, the National Assembly will reconvene on Tuesday 17th January to address pressing matters of national importance, including the President’s request for the reorganization of Ways and Means Advances from the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The National Assembly passed the 2023 Appropriation Bill, the 2022 Supplementary Appropriation Bill, and the Finance Bill 2022 on December 28, 2022, and then adjourned for the break.
A few days prior, Buhari had requested that the Senate and the House of Representatives accept the restructuring of the WMAs that the CBN had granted to the Federal Government, noting that the remaining amount as of December 19, 2022 was N23,719,703,774,306.90.
The Senate gave the president’s request fast processing on December 28, 2022, but that day, the request faced a setback because the House has not yet taken the request into consideration.
Later, Buhari issued a threat that if the National Assembly rejected his proposal for a loan-to-bond swap on the CBN’s government overdrafts, the nation would have to pay N1.8 trillion in extra interest this year.
Data from the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Papers, as well as the public presentation documents of the approved budgets by the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, show that the Federal Government paid interest of N4.12 trillion between 2019 and 2022 on the loans it received from the CBN through Ways and Means Advances.
Ahmad Lawan, the Senate President, had, however, also stated, at least twice after the Senate’s rejection, that the parliamentarians will review the domestic borrowing.
But given that several House members who are split over it, there are signs that the president’s proposal might have a similar outcome there.
The domestic borrowing, according to certain House members, violated both the Fiscal Responsibility Act and the CBN Act. Others, however, asserted that the government must borrow in order to improve people’s lives.
Nicholas Ossai, a different Delta State representative, detailed how he attempted to address the mounting national debt under the current administration but was shut down for speaking out of turn. But he pointed out that in order to deal with the people’s urgent problems, the government was left with no choice but to take out loans.
