Contempt: Senate Threatens to Invoke Powers against Corporate Affairs Commission Boss, Signals Amendments to PIA

• Demand return to priority-based budgeting, as budget reform storm rocks NASS 

•Directs NNPCL to submit remittance records

• Oil revenue probe stalled as minister seeks more time 

•Senators fault weak capital releases, rising debt burden

Sunday Aborisade in Abuja

Senate on Thursday escalated its oversight offensive against key economic institutions, threatening to invoke its constitutional powers to remove Registrar-General of Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), Hussaini Magaji, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), over repeated failure to honour legislative summons.

The red chamber also signalled imminent amendments to Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) in response to sweeping oil revenue reforms by President Bola Tinubu.

The twin developments unfolded at a high-stakes interactive session between Senate Committee on Finance and members of the president’s economic management team at the National Assembly.

Lawmakers declared that Nigeria’s current budgeting model had collapsed under its own weight.

Chairman of the committee, Senator Sani Musa, described the engagement as “urgent and strategic”, warning that the 2026 fiscal cycle must mark a decisive break from what he called an outdated envelope budgeting system that prioritised inputs over measurable outcomes.

But it was Senate’s hard-line stance on revenue accountability that dominated proceedings.

The committee issued a stern warning to CAC’s Registrar-General, accusing him of serial disregard for legislative invitations.

Senator Orji Kalu moved a motion for his immediate removal, describing his conduct as an affront to the authority of the senate.

“This man has been insulting the senate and we cannot take it anymore,” Kalu declared, a position seconded by Senator Adams Oshiomhole.

Ruling on the motion, Musa said the committee would not tolerate continued non-compliance, citing Section 89 of the constitution, which empowers the National Assembly to summon and sanction public officials.

Musa said, “Any MDA that we invite almost every time will tell us that he is at the Villa. The registrar-general has refused on so many occasions to honour the invitation and the calls of this committee.

“Oversight is not an optional courtesy. It is a constitutional requirement.”

The lawmakers insisted that revenue-generating agencies must submit to full transparency, warning that weak remittances and opaque accounting are eroding public confidence in fiscal governance.

The committee also revealed that Tinubu would soon transmit an executive bill seeking amendments to PIA to reflect emerging fiscal realities, particularly in the wake of his recent executive order mandating direct remittance of oil and gas revenues into the Federation Account.

Under the directive, royalty oil, tax oil, profit oil, profit gas and other revenues under production-sharing and risk-service contracts are to be paid directly to the Federation Account.

The order also scrapped the 30 per cent Frontier Exploration Fund and discontinued the 30 per cent management fee on profit oil and profit gas previously retained by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited.

However, Senate’s broader investigation into the executive order suffered a setback as Minister of Petroleum Resources requested additional time to prepare his defence before a joint hearing of both chambers.

Lawmakers had convened the session to scrutinise the fiscal and legal implications of the order, amid concerns from industry stakeholders that unilateral alterations to the PIA framework could unsettle investor confidence.

Senate Committee on Finance further directed the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited to submit comprehensive documentation detailing its remittance obligations, compliance levels and timelines.

Musa cautioned that while the executive order was widely perceived as a revenue-boosting measure, Nigeria had yet to achieve its desired revenue targets, underscoring the need for legislative fine-tuning of the PIA.

Beyond the oil sector controversy, the committee launched a sweeping critique of Nigeria’s incremental envelope budgeting system, urging the economic team to immediately commence a transition to a performance- and priority-based framework.

“The incremental allocation model has outlived its usefulness. It promotes routine expenditure expansion rather than strategic prioritisation,” Musa said.

He lamented persistent delays in capital releases, under-execution of projects and weak revenue performance, arguing that these patterns are widening fiscal deficits and weakening service delivery.

He said, “You can see on paper that there is money, but where is the money? If by December we cannot assess ourselves realistically, then the system is failing.

“We must return to a disciplined budget cycle where one fiscal year ends before another begins.”

Lawmakers also questioned the utilisation of budget support funds approved for the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years, stating that February was almost over with minimal capital disbursements for 2025.

Responding, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, acknowledged improvements in revenue performance, but warned that debt servicing obligations remained a major drain.

Edun stated, “Though revenue has increased, the high interest on debt servicing is draining it. We are servicing debt running up to N152 trillion.”

He added that a significant portion of the debt stock was inherited, while the current administration’s borrowings were “in the 20s”.

He assured lawmakers that the payment system would be improved rather than discarded wholesale, explaining that prioritisation would originate from MDAs before final approval by the president.

Senator Jimoh Ibrahim raised concerns over the absence of a unified national revenue data infrastructure, lamenting that Nigeria still lacks an integrated server and official public service email system.

Ibrahim said, “How do we monitor revenue when we do not even have a national server?” He stated that any economy without reliable data architecture was fundamentally weak.

With deliberations on the 2026 Appropriation Bill gathering momentum, Senate has signalled a tougher posture on fiscal discipline, revenue transparency and institutional accountability.

From threatening to unseat a key regulator over non-compliance, to pushing amendments to the PIA and demanding a wholesale shift in Nigeria’s budgeting philosophy, lawmakers made it clear that the next fiscal cycle would not proceed under business-as-usual assumptions.

For the executive, the message was unmistakable: reform must now move beyond rhetoric to measurable, enforceable outcomes, or face escalating parliamentary resistance.