REVEALED : HOW NATIONAL ASSEMBLY SHARED N120 BILLION BUDGET

Clear revelations are beginning to emerge on how the much-criticised N120 billion allocated to the National Assembly is shared among the lawmakers and other legislative bodies operating in the national parliament. The National Assembly’s annual budget was N150 billion, but following public outcry, the Seventh Assembly slashed it to N120 billion for the Eighth Assembly.

There are 469 lawmakers in both houses (109 senators and 360 Reps); with about 4, 660 civil servants comprising 3,208 from National Assembly Service Commission (NASC), 337 management staff, 115 National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS) staff and about 2,435 legislative aides. Each lawmaker is entitled to at least five aides, while the Senate president, speaker, deputy Senate president and deputy speaker have more than five aides. A document obtained exclusively by New Telegraph from the National Assembly Accounts Department reveals that a member of the House of Representatives takes home N1, 133, 225.50 monthly while a senator receives N1,410,000.

This amount is made up of basic salary, vehicle maintenance, housing and wardrobe allowance, entertainment, utility, domestic staff, constituency, newspaper, recess and personal assistant. The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) has been most critical of the National Assembly and recently queried why “109 senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives gulp as much as N120 billion in a year which is almost twice the 2015 budget of Ekiti State of N80.774 billion, a state with the population of 2,384,212 people.

How equitable is it for less than 500 national legislators to spend N120 billion annually? Benue State has as many as 4,219,244 people, it budgeted N98.54 billion; Zamfara has 3,259,846 citizens and budgeted N92.80 billion; and Ebonyi budgeted N80.02 billion for 2,173,501 people.”

But documents obtained from the Accounts Department of the National Assembly by New Telegraph show that out of the N120 billion, the management of the Assembly gets N12, 130, 000, 945, the senate will receive N31, 538, 400, 108, while the House of Representatives will take N49, 261, 634, 501 billion.

The National Assembly Service Commission is to receive N2, 057, 422, 086, legislative aides attached to the 469 lawmakers get N10, 088, 672, 279, general services receives N9, 869, 366, 477 while 399, 004, 207 is for service wide votes. The National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS) takes N4, 391, 499, 427 billion while PAC (Senate) and PAC (House) got N120 million and N144 million respectively.

The PAC funds cater for Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the Pan African Parliament, ECOWAS Parliament, African, Caribbean and Pacific-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly and a host of others. According to the document, in 2014 budget, which was N150 billion, the management got N15.162 billion while Senate and House received N39.423 and N61.577 billion respectively.

The Assembly Service Commission got N2.571 billion, legislative aides receive N12.610 billion, PAC (Senate and House) was allocated N150 million and N180 million each. General services was given N12. 336 billion, NILS got N5.489 billion while the service wide votes was N498.755 million.