Information available to Vigil360.com suggests renewed tension between the Presidency and National Assembly over the 2017 budget. The Executive Arm according to the report is poised to seek legal interpretation of Section 80 of the 1999 Constitution as amended, at the Supreme Court.
The section supposedly gives the National Assembly the powers to alter the Appropriation bill submitted by the Presidency before passage.
The Presidency is irked by the insertion into the 2017 Budget, of about 400 projects by the National Assembly, which the Buhari Administration has frowned against. According to a source in the Presidency, “The illegal insertions were done purely for pecuniary and political reasons and not in the interest of ordinary Nigerians.”
The perennial disagreement over the powers of the legislature to distort the budget has been a long standing battle between the Executive and Legislature. The bone of contention has always been the question of the legislature revising budget estimates proposed by the Executive Arm of Government.
A closer examination of Femi Falana’s recent arguments underscore the fact that 2017 budget may have been laden with booby traps at the National Assembly; as the legal luminary equally questioned the powers of the National Assembly to make major additions or subtractions to Executive submission.
Although the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Legislative Affairs had on Sunday stated that the Presidency will not reject the 2017 Budget passed by NASS, the proposed attempt to seek legal interpretation suggests the last has not been seen of the Budget.
