The Federal Government\u2019s N23.7 trillion Ways and Means approval request is still pending before the National Assembly. When Senate resumed plenary on January 17, the Special Committee on Restructuring of Ways and Means Advances of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) requested a three-day extension to enable it look into the matter. The Committee stated that it was yet to receive details of the Ways and Means advances, as efforts to meet with the Minister for Finance, the CBN Governor and heads of relevant government ministries, departments and agencies, fell through. With the expiration of the three-day extension and the Senate\u2019s adjournment of plenary on January 25 to resume on February 28, the request remains unresolved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\nwill be recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari wrote to the National Assembly\nin December 2022 seeking approval for restructuring of Ways and Means balance of\nN23.7 trillion over a tenure of 40 years, with a three-year moratorium on\nprincipal repayment and an interest rate of 9 per cent. Out of this amount, the\nFederal Government has spent N22.7 trillion over the past ten years. The request caused an uproar among lawmakers,\nwho questioned how such loans could have been taken without the knowledge and\napproval of the legislature. Indeed, the request threw up several issues that\nare perceived as violations of section 38 of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)\nAct 2007, which empowers the Bank to grant temporary advances to the Federal\nGovernment to make up for deficiency of budget revenue. Section 38(2) provides\nthat the total amount of such advances outstanding shall not at any time exceed\nfive per cent of the Federal Government actual revenue for the previous year. Subsection\n3, paragraph (a) of the provision states thus: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
(3) All Advances made pursuant to this section shall be repaid \u2013 <\/em> The outstanding\namount of N23.7 trillion, which was reported to have been loaned to the Federal\nGovernment over 10 years appears to exceed the five per cent threshold provided\nby law. Also, the President is only seeking the approval of the National\nAssembly barely five months to the end of his tenure. The CBN also appears to\nhave continued to make such advances available to the Federal Government when\nprevious ones were still unpaid, in contravention of the provision. It is still\nunclear what these funds were used for. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Federal Government\u2019s N23.7 trillion Ways and Means approval request is still pending before the National Assembly. When Senate resumed plenary on January 17, the Special Committee on Restructuring of Ways and Means Advances of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) requested a three-day extension to enable it look into the matter. The Committee stated that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3072"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3082,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072\/revisions\/3082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
(a) as soon as possible and shall in any event be repayable by the end of the Federal Government financial year in which they are granted and if such advances remain unpaid at the end of the year, the power of the Bank to grant such further advances in any subsequent years shall not be exercisable, unless the outstanding advances have been repaid; <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n