Budget Extension: National Assembly Encouraging Fiscal Indiscipline — NEFGAD

The Network for the Actualization of Social Growth and Viable Development (NEFGAD), a leading public procurement and fiscal responsibility advocacy group in Nigeria, has strongly criticized the National Assembly over what it described as a dangerous trend of encouraging fiscal indiscipline through the repeated extension of national budgets.

In a statement released to the press in Abuja on Tuesday, the Country Head of NEFGAD Mr Akingunola Omoniyi expressed concern over the National Assembly’s consideration of another bill seeking to extend the implementation of the 2024 Appropriation Act — the second such extension this year.

It will be recalled that the first extension, granted earlier this year, had already shifted the implementation of the 2024 Appropriation Act to June 2025. NEFGAD argues that a further extension undermines the constitutional structure of public finance management in Nigeria.

“The National Assembly’s oversight responsibility on public finance is being badly compromised. National budgets, by design and as enshrined in the Constitution, are time-bound instruments. Their nomenclature — ‘2024 Budget’, for instance — is not merely semantic. It reflects a constitutionally defined fiscal year, which ends on December 31 of the given appropriation year,” the statement read.

NEFGAD further noted that this constitutional framework is not arbitrary but a deliberate measure by the drafters of the Constitution to promote transparency, accountability, and fiscal discipline.

“A budget is a financial estimate prepared by the executive with the presumption that adequate needs assessments and due diligence have been conducted. If implementation fails, it is the National Assembly’s duty to demand accountability — not to extend timelines endlessly,” NEFGAD asserted.

The group emphasized that the existence of the 2025 Appropriation Act renders any prolonged implementation of the 2024 budget irregular, unconstitutional, and misleading. It called on the National Assembly to either discontinue the extension or revise the nomenclature accordingly, as continuing to refer to it as the “2024 Appropriation Act” beyond its legal expiration date of December 31, 2024, is both deceptive and unlawful.

NEFGAD further stated that its position is without prejudice to the constitutional power of the National Assembly to amend laws of the federation, which he argued that such power in itself is not without limit which must be excercised in line with national interests, constitutional provisions and principles, urging the National Assembly to recommit to its constitutional mandate and uphold the principles of fiscal responsibility and institutional discipline, which are critical to Nigeria’s economic stability and democratic accountability.

Budget Extension: National Assembly Encouraging Fiscal Indiscipline — NEFGAD is first published on The Whistler Newspaper