A senior lawyer, Mr. Sebastine Hon (SAN), has called on the acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) to sign the Appropriation Bill into law.

Hon, in a statement issued in Abuja on Monday, disagreed with Lagos lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana, who had advised Osinbajo not to sign the budget into law.

Hon said: "I have read the comments credited to my learned brother of the Inner Bar, Falana, asking Osibanjo not to append his signature to the budget as passed by the National Assembly. His reason for this advice is that the National Assembly acted illegally in increasing the budgetary estimates earlier submitted by the President. I beg to disagree with Falana."

Hon, who has written many books on the constitution explained that under section 81(1) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 as amended, the President of Nigeria is obligated each year to cause budgetary estimates to be 'laid' before each house of the National Assembly, and the National Assembly becomes obligated under section 59 of the Constitution to deliberate on the estimates and pass same into law as an appropriation bill.

He said: "The word 'laid' in section 81(1) of the constitution, therefore, if read subject to the legislative powers of the National Assembly under section 59, has given the National Assembly some level of powers over the estimates sent by the president.

"Indeed, the word 'laid' in the subsection suggests about two things: (a) 'put on the legislative table for deliberation and passing into law;' and (b) 'consider the estimates as human beings and not as robots.'

"Clearly, from this interpretative reasoning, the National Assembly has power to tinker with the estimates sent to it by the President - and this includes subtracting or adding to those estimates."

He argued that if the framers of the constitution had intended that the president alone should have power over budgetary proposals, they would not have enacted sections 59 and 81(1) of the constitution.

"I make bold to state that these are some of the provisions intended by the lawmakers to act as checks and balances in the power sharing arrangements of the constitution as between the executive and the legislature," he added.

He also said it was not fair for a court to read into an enactment an exception which had not been included in such statute and which would have the effect of depriving the person intended to be protected by that provision or statute. He cited the case of Fajimolu vs. University of Ilorin (2007) All FWLR (Pt. 350) 1361 C.A.

The statement reads further: "Besides, it is a settled principle of statutory interpretation that what is not excluded by the express words of a statute is to be interpreted as being included therein.

"The National Assembly is further backed by section 10(2) of the Interpretation Act, 2004, which provides thus: 10(2) An enactment which confers power to do any act shall be construed as also conferring all such other powers as are reasonably necessary to enable that act to be done or are incidental to the doing of it.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201705230155.html

So technically he is saying the upper and lower chambers are the ones ruling the country? Because by increasing the budget the president sent for their approval that's the message they are passing across.

Saraki and his fellow idiots need to be checkmated and asap.