Indications are that the 2017 federal budget which has been passed by the National Assembly and signed into law by the acting president is still being amended due to disagreements between the National Assembly and the presidency. The 2017 budget, still not finalised in the second half of the year, was meant to spark that return to growth after the first downturn in a quarter of a century.
The presidency and senior lawmakers had also promised that it would avoid the severe delays in passing the previous year’s budget, which was signed off in May 2016 — five months into the budget year.
Acting President Yemi Osinbajo signed Nigeria’s 2107 budget into law last month.
The delays for the 2017 budget come as the presidency locks horns with the National Assembly over projects added to the document by lawmakers’ efforts to channel funds and development to their constituencies at the expense of the federal government. “Before the budget was signed it was agreed between the executive and the lawmakers that those insertions of some new projects into the budget made by the National Assembly should be removed and replaced with the priority projects of the federal government which the lawmakers removed,” a presidency official told Reuters, declining to be named because they were not authorised to speak to media.
Osinbajo signed this year’s budget, despite it not being finalised, because the process had already dragged on for too long, the official said. A budget ministry spokesman cited Osinbajo’s June statement from the budget signing, in which he said the National Assembly had agreed to reinstate federal government projects and that “will be expeditiously considered and approved by the National Assembly.”
He declined to say whether funds from the 2017 budget had begun to be released.
The presidency could still transfer funds from one part of the budget to another, said Abdulrazak Namdas, a spokesman for the House of Representatives. He added that the budget, now signed into law, “must be implemented”.
The acting president has led Nigeria for most of 2017 while the ailing President Muhammadu Buhari remains in London on medical leave. Last year’s budget was similarly delayed for months by disagreements between lawmakers and the presidency over spending plans that cut the supply of government money and deepened the economic crisis. Last month, Buhari said in a statement that the 2018 budget proposal will be submitted by October and parliament will conclude the process by December so the country can return to a normal budget cycle from next year.
