The House of Representatives in Nigeria commenced debate on the 2014 appropriation bill on Tuesday after the ruling Peoples Democratic Party regained its majority leadership in the House.
The lawmakers began debate on the budget, following the ruling by the Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, on a point of order raised by a member that stalled the debate last week.
An All Progressives Congress’ lawmaker, Hon Emmanuel Jime, had pointed out that the Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, did not submit an estimate of the budget appropriation, thereby stalling the proceedings.
He said: “The law requires that an estimate of the budget appropriations must be submitted with the budget, which was not adhered to.
“What we have is a summary and abridged version of the estimate. The Minister has no responsibility under this law to give us her own summary”.
After the point of order was raised, a PDP lawmaker, John Enoh, countered the order, saying that the budget estimate submitted had the needed estimate added to it. He insisted that the House should not stop the consideration of the budget on the ground that no estimate was submitted.
Some members of the house were mandated to look at the issue and advise the presiding officer accordingly. They were given 24 hours to advise the presiding officer.
After the speaker had been briefed, he insisted that the Minister of Finance must comply fully with the Fiscal Responsibility Act and submit the complete estimates of 31 government agencies to the house.
Honourable Tambuwal, however, ruled that the debate should commence, pending the submission of the estimates by the minister.
Defections Proceedings
But the proceedings began with what has become a normal feature of the House of Representatives proceedings, defections.
When it ended, five lawmakers had moved from the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the PDP with only one moving from the PDP to the APC.
At the end of the defection notices, the dispute between the PDP and the APC over majority leadership was laid to rest, as the PDP now has 178 lawmakers while APC reduced to 168.
Having concluded the defection issue, the house turned to the 2014 appropriation bill, specially to the committee set up to look into the non-compliance of the Executive arm of government with the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
The speaker appealed to the lawmakers not to be distracted with the political situations that had engulfed the country.
It was the first allotted day for the debate and lawmakers gave their positions on the budget.
