Describes Moves Unconstitutional
By Halimah Olamide
A budget transparency advocacy group, BudgIT has described as unconstitutional, the proposal by the Federal Government to run four budgets simultaneously within a year.
BudgIT, in a statement made available to the NPO Reports, said the proposed elongation of the implementation period for the 2023 Approved Budget and 2023 Supplementary Budget from the proposed termination date of December 31, 2023, to December 31, 2024.
Nancy Odimegwu, Communications Officer of the organisation, said it is worrisome is the fact that the Federal Government is currently drafting another 2024 Supplementary budget, which it intends to implement alongside the 2023 Approved Budget.
“Recall that the 2023 Approved Budget of N21.83 trillion, signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari in January 2023, was designed to run for 12 calendar months from January to December, as is the practice globally. “In addition, while the 2024 Appropriation Bill was being drafted, the 2023 Supplementary Budget of N2.17 trillion was passed by the National Assembly and assented to by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu barely two months before the end of the 2023 fiscal year,” BudgIt said in its statement .
It added that the proposal is an anomaly that has no precedence.
“Standard practice should be that projects not catered to within a fiscal year are rolled over to the budget of a new fiscal year,’
For a brief period, Nigeria returned to the January – December budget calendar in 2019 but retrogressed from the 2020 fiscal year. From 2020 to date, the Federal Government has routinely extended the implementation period for the capital budgets beyond 12 calendar months—a practice that negates the principle of annuality of public budgets. The National Assembly had initially extended the implementation of the 2023 Approved Budget and 2023 Supplementary Budget to June 30, 2024, and now to December 31, 2024. If allowed to be implemented, the practice would convert Nigeria’s annual budget into a biennial one, a practice neither provided for by the 1999 Constitution nor the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2007.