The Senate rejected President Muhammadu Buhari’s proposal to restructure the N22.7 trillion in Ways and Means advances that the Federal Government had obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria on Wednesday.
Following a commotion in the Senate over the issue, the lawmakers rejected the request.
Buhari had requested in a letter read aloud on the Senate floor last Wednesday that the N22.7 trillion in ways and means advances that had been obtained from the CBN over the previous ten years be restructured in addition to the N1 trillion that would be obtained as a new domestic loan.
In the letter, he listed the Federal Government’s ways and means as advances from the Central Bank of Nigeria for emergency funding of postponed receipt of budgetary shortfalls.
However, issues arose when Solomon Adeola (APC Lagos West), the committee’s chairman, was asked to deliver a report on it.
The Senate leadership tried to acquire the finance committee’s report, which had recommended that the president’s request be granted, but certain senators quickly voiced their opposition.
The first senator to speak out against it was Senator Betty Apiafi (PDP, Rivers), who used the constitutional point of order to claim that the Nigerian constitution is unaware of the manner and means of expenditure.
However, she was declared out of order by Senate President Ahmad Lawan for allowing the report to be delivered before objecting to it.
Some of the senators expressed their opposition to the report by grumbling while it was being presented by Senator Adeola.
Senator George Thompson Sekibo, (APC, Rivers State) raised a constitutional point of order to explain why the ‘ways and means’ advances were illegal and unconstitutional.
He informed the Senate that the action of the President was also in breach of the CBN Act, the Senate standing rules, just as it attacked the privileges of the Senate and National Assembly.
Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, attempted severally to get the Senate to accede to the president’s request but it failed because of the depth of information and argument adduced by Sekibo.
Senator Sekibo cited sections 80, 83, Section1,13(1) of the 1999 Constitution, and section 38 of the CBN Act while kicking against the request.