From Fred Itua and Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja 

The Senate and the House of Representatives, yesterday, deferred the passage of the 2023 Appropriation Bill till Wednesday, December 28, at their separate plenary sessions.

While the Senate hinged its inability to pass the budget on a messy copy submitted to a joint session by the presidency  in October, no reason was given by the House. 

Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, while adjourning plenary, said the parliament would reconvene on Wednesday to pass the budget in order to beat the December 31 deadline. 

Lawan said: “The reason why we couldn’t pass the budget is because what was brought to us was not a clean copy. Our committee on Appropriation had to clean the copies, in collaboration with the Executive arm. The problem came from the Executive. The cleaning of the budget was concluded yesterday, Wednesday. The Secretariat couldn’t work on the copies of the budget.  The earliest time we can pass the budget will be next Wednesday, 28th of December. This is a festive period. People need to go on holidays. Next Wednesday, our members and those in the House of Representatives, will pass the budget. 

“Finance committee is holding its public hearing too. But the time is too short. We received a new request on Wednesday. The Senate needs to adjourn to allow our committees to get to work.

“I want to thank all of you my distinguished colleagues for your support, cooperation, commitment, dedication on all these things that we have been doing as a legislature.

“Let me advise the Executive… The Bills that have come to us, the Ways and Means, the Supplementary Appropriation, whoever is invited to come and explain, give information or any details for the National Assembly to understand must do so because it’s not our work alone. We want to do our work thoroughly, we want to understand whatever we are going to deal with and to base our decisions on information, and time is of essence. Just like we are going to sacrifice part of our festive period to be back here, nobody should tell us that they are in their places because it is Christmas. They should be available with every necessary information.”

In his remarks, House Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, said parliament would adjourn for the year after passing the two bills.

“We were meant to close today (yesterday) but you know our work is a very tough one. We’ll come back on Wednesday…,” Gbajabiamila stated.

Meanwhile, the House has  resolved to probe alleged sharp practices  by fintech and online mobile digital loan applications companies operating in the country.

It mandated its Committees  on Banking and Currency, Financial Crimes and Telecommunications to undertake the investigation and report back within four weeks for further legislative actions.

This followed the adoption of a motion moved under matters of urgent public importance, by Ahmed Satomi.

Satomi, in his motion, noted that there was a proliferation of online loan applications  across the country, which are operated by some unscrupulous persons. He stated that oftentimes, low income earners were coerced to borrow from the loan applications.

“The COVID-19 pandemic affected many economies including Nigeria as jobs were lost and incomes were affected, due to the lockdowns, restrictions on movement and face-to-face interactions sped up the pace of digitalisation of financial services and the infiltration of some unscrupulous unregulated financial service operators.

“These predatory lending apps are disguised as platforms where unsuspecting members of the public are promised access quick loans with no collateral except provision of bank verification number (BVN).

“Victims are expected to repay loans at astronomical interest rates within 3-7 days as against the 91 to 365 days claim on Google Play store which has over 83.07% market share in Nigeria.”

The lawmaker expressed concern that most of the fintech companies were either not licensed or operating with expired licenses. 

“Searches for the registration status of loan apps in Nigeria from the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) shows that founding directors of such apps or companies were foreign nationals without the required license to operate the volume of financial transactions and illegally operating in the country.”