The late submission and inevitably delayed passage of the 2025 national budget resets the annual January-December fiscal circle achieved in the last five years
President Bola Tinubu is expected to present the 2025 budget before the national assembly today. This is less than two weeks before the emd of 2024. By implication, the January-December fiscal circle achieved and sustained previously will be distorted. This is because parliament is not likely to consider and pass the proposals earlier than January 2025.
In the recent past, the budget estimates were presented by the first week of October, following the national assembly’s review and approval of the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (FSP). This afforded adequate time for legislative scrutiny and passage, allowing presidential assent just in time for the new year. The certainty of that process allowed strategic planning and good decision-making by private and public entities who depend on the national fiscal framework to deliver their services advisedly.
Stabilised fiscal circle…
Conversely, late passage and assent of the budget had serious implications – sadly this was commonplace until the second tenure of former President Muhammadu Buhari, who had to implement a delayed budget handed by his predecessor in office. Recall that it was on December 17, 2014, former President Goodluck Jonathan presented the 2015 budget estimate, which was passed by the national assembly on April 28 2015 and signed into law on May 20, 2015. The infographic below gives a snapshot of budget presentation, passage and presidential assent in the last 10 years and straddling three presidents:
2025 budget breaches the norm
President Tinubu was handed the 2023 budget to implement having been enacted by Buhari on January 3, 2023. This ‘transition’ budget was submitted to parliament on October 7 2022 and got passed by the national assembly on December 28 2022. In his first year in office, President Tinubu tried to maintain the fiscal circle by submitting the 2024 budget on December 1 2023. The national assembly kept faith by passing the estimates on December 30 2023 while the president promptly signed the budget into law on January 1, 2024.
But the story is now different with the 2025 budget. The Federal Executive Council (FEC), had on November 15, 2024 approved a N47.9 trillion federal budget estimate for the 2025 fiscal year during its meeting at State House, Abuja. This paved the way for the submission of the MTEF/FSP for 2025–2027 to both the Senate and the House of Representatives on November 19, 2024. These documents ought to have been submitted four (4) months before the budget presentation, according to the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) 2007. Section 11(1)(b) of the Act specifically mandates the Federal Government, not later than four months before the commencement of the next financial year, lay before the National Assembly, an MTEF for the next three financial years.
Alarm bells ignored
The situation with the 2025 budget was foreseeable. Even lawmakers aired their views when Rep. Clement Jimbo (APC, Akwa Ibom) on December 15, 2024 presented a motion during plenary of the House of Representatives on the “need to urge the executive to comply with Section 11 (I) of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007.” The lawmaker had expressed worry that “the time the National Assembly requires to exercise its functions as enshrined in section 88(2)(b) is technically being taken away by the non-compliance of section 11(1)(b) of FRA 2007 by the executive.”
Contributing to the motion, House Minority Leader, Rep. Kingsley Chinda (PDP, Rivers) noted that unless budget estimates arrive at the parliament on time; it would be difficult for legislators to scrutinise it. “This government prides itself on the adherence to the January-December budget cycle. It is a good development. In the 2023 budget, we were practically rushed into completing work on the estimates just to meet up with the January – December cycle. This must not happen again. By now, the MTEF should have been with us.”
In its resolution, the House urged the Federal Government to comply with section 11(1)(b) and submit to the National Assembly 2025 Budget proposal without further delays. It further mandated the Committees on National Planning and Economic Development, Appropriation, and Finance to ensure compliance within two weeks. Apparently, nothing happened.
