President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, says efforts must be made to strengthen the National Assembly Budget and Research Office (NABRO), to ensure efficiency in the discharge of its functions.
According to Lawan, such efforts include providing the needed legal backing and funding to enable the office perform its duties effectively.
Lawan stated this after a bill seeking to provide for the establishment of the National Assembly Budget and Research Office scaled second reading during plenary.
He said, “This (NABRO) is an office that already exists, because I recall in 2000 that about 22 years or so, ago, the then house reps introduced the bill seeking to establish NABRO.
“I’m aware that office was established by the National Assembly, but there is no law backing it.
“[And] this effort by Senator Sadiq Umar Suleiman is to provide the legal framework, the legal backing necessary for that institution to have the legitimacy that is necessary.”
The Senate President said; “I’m also aware the office hardly does anything, not because the people are not competent enough, but because they have not been enabled.
“I think it behoves the National Assembly to make funds available for institutions that will make its activities more effective and efficient.
“Individually, we had been given five legislative aides, and the kind of funds available to us will not give us the kind of consultants that we ordinarily need as parliamentarians.
“So, the NABRO office is supposed to house experts in different fields who will give us the best analysis on any issue of significance in national development that Parliament is supposed to consider.
“I believe that we need to energize that office and maybe look for more competent hands to have it perform the functions it is meant to do.”
Sponsor of the NABRO bill 2021, Senator Sadiq Umar (Kwara North), in his lead debate on the bill, said that a total of N1,126,529,588 billion was needed to fund recurrent and capital expenditure of the National Assembly Budget and Research Office in the first twelve months after the commencement of the Act.
Umar explained that NABRO was an initiative of the Nigerian legislature to support its work in its engagements with Executive institutions.
He said “giving legal backing to the office would provide the National Assembly with objective, timely and non-partisan analysis, information and estimates needed for economic and budget decisions.”
Senator Umar further said that it would, among others, provide independent, unbiased and non-partisan analysis of the executive arm of government’s annual budget estimates;
According to the lawmaker, NABRO would also provide independent and continuous review and monitoring of existing and proposed programmes and budgets of the Federal Government.
In addition to keeping track of bills, the office would provide analysis of the economic implication of the Federal budget on the private sector and the budgetary and financial implication of any proposed legislation when so required by any committee of the National Assembly.
It would be responsible for the preparation and presentation to the National Assembly, periodic forecast of economic trends and alternative fiscal policies with regards to the Federal Government’s Money Bills, brought before the National Assembly in a financial year, as well as provide cost estimates including the inflationary impact of any proposed legislation.
The bill after consideration was referred by the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, to the Committee on Establishment and Public Service Matters.
The Committee was given four weeks to report back to the chamber in plenary.