The Senate on Wednesday denied President Maj Gen Muhammadu Buhari (retd.)’s motion to restructure the N22.7tn Ways and Means advances collected by the federal government from the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Lawmakers denied the motion after a Senate uproar over the matter.
Buhari, in a letter read in the Senate on Wednesday last week, had requested a restructuring of N22.7tn advances collected by CBN over the past decade, in addition to N1tn to be collected as a new domestic loan.
In the letter, he said Ways and Ways are advances from the Central Bank of Nigeria to the federal government for emergency funding of the late arrival of budget deficits.
Difficulty arose, however, when the committee’s chair, Solomon Adeola (APC Lagos West), was asked to provide a report on the matter.
Some members of the upper legislature were quick to object when Senate leadership tried to get the report from their finance committee that recommended allowing the president’s motion.
Senator Betty Apiafi (PDP, Rivers) was the first to speak out on the constitutional point of the Rules of Procedure, saying that the ways and means of spending are not known to the Nigerian constitution.
However, she was incapacitated by Senate President Ahmad Lawan for allowing the report to be presented before protesting it.
Some of the senators expressed their opposition to the report by grumbling as it was presented by Senator Adeola.
Senator George Thompson Sekibo (APC, Rivers State) raised a constitutional question on the Rules of Procedure to explain why the “how and by” advances are illegal and unconstitutional.
He told the Senate that the President’s actions also violated the CBN Act, the Senate’s permanent rules, as well as attacked the prerogatives of the Senate and the National Assembly.
Senate President Ahmed Lawan eagerly tried to get the Senate to grant the President’s request, but failed due to the depth of information and arguments presented by Sekibo.
Senator Sekibo cited Sections 80, 83, Sections 1, 13(1) of the 1999 Constitution and Section 38 of the CBN Act while opposing the motion.