Deliberations on the request by President Muhammadu Buhari to the National Assembly for restructuring of Ways and Means Advances (WMAS) from the Central Bank of Nigeria are expected to start today, Tuesday January 17, 2023.
The Federal Parliament had suspended discussions on the issue late last year and embarked on Christmas and New Year break after passing three separate bills including 2023 Appropriation Bill, the 2022 Supplementary Appropriation Bill and the Finance Bill 2022 on December 28, 2022.
The request made by President Buhari is that the Senate and the House of Representatives should approve the modification of the WMAs given to the Federal Government by the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Buhari had informed the lawmakers that the balance of the WMAs as of December 19, 2022, was N23,719,703,774,306.90.
Even though the National Assembly had indicated interest to engage the presidential request, nothing concrete is yet to be done.
In the midst of this delay in restructuring the loan-to-bond band demand, the President had alerted that Nigeria might be paying an additional sum of N1.8tn as interest in 2023 if the National Assembly eventually rejected his request.
Reports revealed that the Nigerian Government paid interests of N4.12tn between 2019 and 2022 on the loans it got from the apex bank through WMAs.
This disclosure was contained in the data obtained from the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework and Fiscal Strategy Papers and the public presentation documents of the approved budgets by the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning.
Recall that the Senate had rejected the domestic borrowing and had passed it into the second chamber of the parliament to deliberate and give their decision.
Meanwhile, insiders in the House of Representatives are saying the tendency of the House toiling the same line as its counterpart in the Senate is high.
While some members of the House were of the view that the domestic borrowing not only contravened the CBN Act but also the Fiscal Responsibility Act, others lawmakers noted that the government must borrow to confront the hardship being faced by Nigerians.
Some lawmakers lamented that the nation’s debt profile has continued to grow, especially under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
They also reiterated the importance of loans to the government but stated that the loans should be channeled toward addressing the needs of the masses.
However, Ahmed Lawn, the President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, had said the chamber would revisit the WMAs loan.
Many Nigerians have bemoaned the rise in the debt profile of the country and have attributed the huge debt to the challenges confronting the nation.
A release by the Debt Management Office (DMO) in December last year had revealed that Nigeria’s debt profile rose by over N1 trillion in just three months which is between June and September 2022.
