In public finance management as well as the budget cycle, there is a time to prepare budgets, another for implementation, reporting, monitoring and evaluation and audit. The cycle continues and rolls on and on. All activities of the budget are guided by law including the commencement and the conclusion. The Nigerian Financial Year is described in the Financial Year Act as the period starting from January 1 to December 31 of every year. Again, Section 318 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) defines the financial year as any period of 12 months beginning on the first day of January in any year or such other date as the National Assembly may prescribe. For now, the National Assembly has not prescribed any new date as the official beginning of the financial year. However, in recent years, the financial year has been undulating depending on the time the National Assembly finished the approval of the budget and when the President assented to the same. The 2015 Financial Year was different from that of 2016, 2017 and the current 2018 year which just started in June.
The National Assembly, in its wisdom, as part of the constitution alteration process, decided to amend Sections 81 and 121 of the constitution to ensure appropriate timeframes that accord with the Nigerian Financial Year Act. It therefore started from the public beginning of the budgeting process which is the presentation of the budget by the President to the National Assembly and the Governor to state Houses of Assembly. The amendment (Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (Fourth Alteration, No. 28) Bill, 2017) proposes that instead of the old order, where the President and governors present the budget estimates at any time in each financial year, they would now be bound to present the same not later than 90 days to the end of the financial year. The essence of the amendment is to give the legislature adequate time to examine, vet and approve the budget before the end of the presentation year and the beginning of the New Year. The amendment proposes a new subsection 1 (a) to the two sections by giving a time line to the National Assembly and state Houses of Assembly to pass the budget for the incoming year before the end of the financial year in which the budget estimates are presented, vis, before the commencement of the next financial year. Essentially, budgets will no longer be presented late or approved late like happened in the last three years. The budget will now be ready on or before January 1 of every year.
This amendment has secured the approval of both Houses of the National Assembly and that of the required majority of state Houses of Assembly in accordance with Section 9 of the constitution. But President Buhari has failed, refused or neglected to give assent to the same. It has been more than 30 days since the bill was forwarded to the President for his assent and there is no information in the public domain on his reasons for refusing assent to it. Ideally, this would have come by way of a letter to the National Assembly. This refusal of assent is surprising considering that the President had in many speeches, including the 2018 budget signing speech, indicated his intention to return the financial year to the January to December timeline and even blamed the National Assembly for delayed approval of the budget. Evidently, this bill should have been a celebrated quick win for the administration, a low hanging fruit that would have been used to shore up the public finance management credibility of the administration. Rather, we have a situation where the administration is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
If the National Assembly had given the executive a timeline without prescribing one for itself, the President might have had a defence for his refusal to assent. It could have been argued that both the executive and legislature need to regulate themselves by submitting to a constitutional timeline. And it would be considered improper for legislators to exempt themselves from the timeframe. In this case, no reasonable person can fathom a reason that makes sense in the company of reasonable Nigerians. So, what is the way forward? Should the legislature fold its hands and watch the progress of Nigeria go to the dogs simply because the President is refusing to do his job? Is it that high level public officials who manage the budgeting process have not given the President a proper advice to guide his decision on assent? What exactly is wrong because the refusal makes no sense!
Section 58 (4) and (5) of the Constitution comes in handy. It provides as follows:(4) Where a bill is presented to the President for assent, he shall within thirty days thereof signify that he assents or that he withholds his assent.(5) Where the President withholds his assent and the bill is again passed by each House, by two-thirds majority, the bill shall become law and the assent of the President shall not be required. The constitution is clear and requires no further elaboration. It is now up to the National Assembly to exercise its powers for the peace, order and good government of Nigeria and override the presidential veto without any further delay. Any other course of action will be a great disservice to the long suffering people of Nigeria. Nigerians do not expect that the executive/legislative rift should get in the way of such clear headed amendments. There must be irreducible minimum levels of cooperation between the two arms of government, no matter the situation; otherwise, the government will need to throw in the towel and call for fresh elections under the Doctrine of Necessity.
This refusal raises a fundamental poser which dogged the 2014 constitution amendment process when the National Assembly decided to strip the President of powers to give assent to amendments of the constitution. The line of reasoning goes thus; The National Assembly is required to garner two-thirds majority vote to amend sections of the constitution and the Fundamental Rights provisions even require four-fifths majority vote to effect amendments. Thereafter, the amendments need the resolution of not less than 24 state Houses of Assembly. Yet, the bill comes back for the assent of one man – the President and Commander-in-Chief who reserves the right to throw spanners into the wheel of the decisions that have travelled this long journey. President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 refused to assent to this constitution amendment and therefore killed all the other beautiful amendments which were contained in just one bill. The National Assembly learnt from that experience and has now split the different amendments into different bills so that disagreement on one will not delay assent to others. This discourse takes the position that presidential assent to a bill that has travelled this long is unnecessary. It is part of the constitutional architecture that can only promote dictatorship in both the long and short term.
Time is of essence in virtually every human endeavour or activity. Good timing produces optimum results for activities. Generally, human nature is about seasons and cycles. One budget season closes at the right time and another starts.
