A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Sebastine has said that National Assembly members have the power under the combined provisions of sections 59 and 81(1) of the Constitution to either increase or reduce the estimates contained the Appropriation Bill submitted by the executive.
The lawyer, who was responding to a Lagos constitutional lawer, Femi Falana (SAN), who said that the lawmakers have no power to increase the budget under the constitution, insisted that there is nothing wrong in what the National Assembly had done and in the acting President signing the document.
According to him, to follow Falana’s advice and further delay the signing of the budget would be suicidal “given that we are at the threshold of the second quarter of the year.”
Speaking during a colloquium organized by the Movement for Genuine Change to mark the 50th anniversary of the creation of Kwara State, Falana had said that Nigerians should not waste energy on the competence of the budget signed by the Acting President but should subject the document to scrutiny.
“I have read the comments credited to my learned brother of the Inner Bar, Femi Falana, SAN, asking the Acting President, Yemi Osibanjo, not to append his signature to the budget as passed by the National Assembly.
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“His reason for this advice is that the National Assembly acted illegally in increasing the budgetary estimates earlier submitted by the President. I beg to disagree with Mr. Falana.
“Under section 81(1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 as amended, the President of Nigeria is obligated each year to cause budgetary estimates to be “laid” before each house of the National Assembly, and the National Assembly becomes obligated under section 59 of the Constitution to deliberate on the estimates and pass same into law as an appropriation bill.” [myad]
