After a 19-day Christmas recess, the federal lawmakers would resume on Tuesday, to among other things, consider President Muhammadu Buhari’s request to restructure Ways and Means Advances from the Central Bank of Nigeria.
It would be recalled that the National Assembly passed the 2023 Appropriation Bill, the 2022 Supplementary Appropriation Bill and the Finance Bill 2022 on December 28, 2022
Before then, the President had requested approval from lawmakers of both Chambers to undertake the restructuring of the WMAs given to the Federal Government by the CBN, noting that the balance, as of December 19, 2022, was N23,719,703,774,306.90.
While the House has yet to consider the presidential request, it suffered a setback at the Senate on December 28, 2022, after the chamber gave it accelerated processing.
Buhari said Nigeria would pay N1.8tn additional interest this year if the National Assembly rejected a loan-to-bond swap request on the CBN overdrafts to the government.
The Federal Government had paid interests of N4.12tn between 2019 and 2022 on the loans it got from the CBN through Ways and Means Advances, according to data from the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Papers and the public presentation documents of the approved budgets by the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning.
However, the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, had also at least twice after the Senate rejection said the lawmakers would revisit the domestic borrowing.
There were indications that the presidential request may suffer a similar fate at the House, as lawmakers were disagreeing overwhelming request.
Some members of the House revealed that the domestic borrowing not only breached the CBN Act but also the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Others, however, argued that the government must borrow to make life easier for the people.
A member from Delta State, Nicholas Ossai, said sometimes back, he was ruled out of order when he rose to speak about the growing debt profile of the country under the current regime.
But Ossai has changed his mind when he saidthe government had no choice but to take loans to address emergency issues affecting the people.
