Buhari sent 12 Bills to National Assembly in three years

THE Presidency sent 12 bills to the Eighth National Assembly since its inception in June 2015, available record in the legislature has shown. The 12 bills are different from the statutory budget-related bills, findings has shown. The Bills generally referred to as Executive Bills are normally read by the Senate leader. The Bills sponsored in both chambers of the National Assembly in the last 37 months include: Communications Service Tax Bill 2015; Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2011 (Repeal and Reenactment) Bill, 2016; Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Bill, 2016; Chartered Institute of Directors of Nigeria (Est. etc,) Bill, 2017; National Lottery Act (Amendment) Bill, 2017 and the National Water Resources Bill, 2017. Others are the National Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Est. etc,) Bill, 2017; Chartered Institute of Forensic and Investigative Auditors in Nigeria (Est. etc,) Bill, 2017; Federal Institute of Industrial Research Bill, 2017; Raw Materials Research and Development Council (Repeal and Reenactment) Bill, 2018; Nigeria Natural Medicine Development Agency (Est. etc,) Bill, 2018 and the Minerals and Mining Bills,2018. It was gathered that of the 12 Bills, only two were aimed at enhancing the anti-corruption war of the government. The Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Bill, 2016 has been passed by the National Assembly. The other one – Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2011 (Repeal and Reenactment) Bill, 2016 – was withdrawn by the Executive due to reported disagreement between the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, and Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Ibrahim Magu. The Senate has, however, passed four other bills in support of the anti-corruption agenda of the present administration, namely – Witness Protection Bill, the Whistleblower Protection Bill, Federal Audit Service Commission Bill and the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit Bill (NFIU. These four bills were sponsored by individual senators as private member bills.]]>