Sahel Reporter

On August 10, 2026, Senegal’s National Assembly took the boldest step yet toward reining in the country’s opaque special funds, launching an urgent extraordinary session to debate a bill that would finally subject these discretionary credits to strict legal rules and confidential audits. But just days later, the executive moved to dilute the text, and on August 25 the Constitutional Council struck it down entirely, forcing lawmakers back to square one. The fight is far from over — and the outcome will determine whether billions in public money ever face real scrutiny.

The initial breakthrough: parliament seizes the initiative

For years, special funds parked at the Presidency and the Prime Ministry have operated with minimal outside oversight. That changed on August 10, 2026, when deputies convened an extraordinary session to examine a bill championed by MP Guy Marius Sagna. The proposal aimed to shatter the longstanding opacity by establishing a strict legal framework and an audit mechanism entrusted to a parliamentary commission and magistrates from the Court of Accounts. It was a decisive move to bring these funds under the rule of law.

The executive counteroffensive

The momentum stalled almost immediately. On August 13, Justice Minister Moussa Sarr introduced a government amendment seeking to reduce the text to broad principles, leaving the specifics of implementation and oversight to regulatory power — effectively keeping control within the executive branch, in line with Articles 67 and 76 of the Constitution. A second amendment on August 14 proposed explicitly including the Presidency, the National Assembly, and the Prime Ministry in the reform’s scope, signaling that the real battle was over the level of legal norm and the extent of parliamentary oversight, not the principle of stronger regulation.

Vote, suspension, and constitutional rejection

The bill passed on August 19, but the next day its examination was suspended following a challenge from the executive. On August 25, 2026, the Constitutional Council delivered a decisive blow: it rejected the ordinary bill outright, ruling that the regime for public credits falls exclusively under organic law, not an ordinary law passed on a parliamentary initiative. The censure forced deputies to restart the entire process on a different legal foundation.

A new legal path — and fresh delays

On September 2, 2026, the Bureau of the National Assembly declared admissible a new organic bill, this time directly amending Organic Law No. 2020-07 of February 26, 2020, on finance laws. Under the institution’s rules, the President of the Republic must now be consulted for an opinion before the text can be sent to committee and placed on the agenda — a procedural step that further postpones any effective oversight mechanism.

What remains at stake

Until this procedure concludes, special credits continue to escape any external accounting control. National defense secrecy is preserved in all versions examined so far; the stated goal is not to eliminate the confidentiality inherent to sovereign spending, but to replace total absence of oversight with circumscribed scrutiny by bodies authorized to handle classified matters without disclosing them. Yet the question of whether this oversight will fully extend to funds at the Presidency, the Prime Ministry, and even the National Assembly itself remains divisive. Some observers suspect that deputies may be reluctant to subject their own credits to the same level of verification as those of the executive.

The financial black hole

The scale of the issue is poorly understood. Since 2011, the amount of special fund credits in the initial finance law has been renewed unchanged at 8,856,296,000 CFA francs, even though the amounts actually mobilized during the year routinely diverge from that figure — with no independent verification mechanism currently able to provide a precise accounting. As long as the organic bill has not completed its parliamentary journey, all these expenditures — from the Presidency to the Prime Ministry and potentially the National Assembly — remain beyond fully operational parliamentary control, despite the offensive launched by Ousmane Sonko and his fellow deputies since early August.

Divergent visions fuel the deadlock

Institutional debates over the bill reveal major disagreements. The parliamentary majority wants to restrict these funds to sovereign domains only, while the executive defends their use for humanitarian and social emergencies. Tensions center on defining the perimeters and purposes of the funds, as well as the modalities of oversight. Until these differences are resolved, the breakthrough remains incomplete — and the money continues to flow unchecked.