CBN, AMCON, Others Shun Budget Defence

The House of Representatives has directed its principal officers to interface with the Committee of Finance and Currency over the failure of some agencies to appear for 2022 budget defence.

Deputy Speaker of the House, Idris Wase, gave the ruling on Wednesday following a motion of Personal Explanation by a member, Fatau Mohammed (APC-Katsina), at plenary. Moving the motion, Mr Mohammed said that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) the Printing and Minting and the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) had failed to appear for 2022 budget defence.

He said Order 20, Rule 18, subsections 1 and 2 of the House stipulated that there shall be a committee known as Committee on Banking and Currency in the house. He said that the rule provided that the committee shall oversight the CBN, banks, Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company, AMCON and evaluate their annual budget.

“It will interest the House to know that none of these agencies has been over sighted in the past two years and they have failed to make their 2022 budget available to the committee. “How long shall we allow this illegality to continue,’’ he said.

The Deputy Minority Leader of the House, Toby Okechukwu (PDP-Enugu), said that the matter has to do with a breach of law.

“This is a breach of law of which this House should make a finding and place it properly on the culpability of these agencies. “It will be proper for this to come in a way of a motion for an investigation,’’ he said. Mr Wase, however, said that the leadership of the house would engage the committee to resolve the matter so that it can exercise its functions.

The deputy speaker said that even as a presiding officer, he was hearing the matter for the first time. “If something like this is happening, we as leadership should know,” he said.