President Muhammadu Buhari has slashed the budget of the National Assembly by N14.5 billion, Daily Trust reports.
The
federal legislature got N139.5bn in the 2018 budget, but under this
year’s budget, the president proposed the sum of N125bn for the
lawmakers, representing a reduction of N14.5bn.
A careful look at
the proposed National Assembly’s budget showed that the entire N125bn
was under recurrent expenditure, with overhead and capital having zero
allocation.
The proposal showed no further breakdown of the National Assembly budget.
For
many years, there had been no details for the National Assembly budget,
until in 2017 when the two chambers made details of their budget
public following sustained public pressure.
Akelicious recalls
that the president had initially proposed the same N125bn for the
lawmakers in 2018, but the legislators jerked it up to N139.5bn, a
development that did not go down well with the executive arm.
Our
correspondent reports that from a budget of N19bn in the year 2000, the
National Assembly’s budget ballooned to N150bn at some point.
For
four years running, between 2010 and 2013, the National Assembly’s
annual budget was N150bn each year, making a total of N600bn for the
four years alone.
The lawmakers’ subsequent budgets hovered
around N120bn, until Buhari’s ýcoming when he reduced it further to
N115bn in 2016, which the lawmakers approved.
The president
proposed the same N115bn for the lawmakers under the 2017 budget, but
they jerked it up to N125bn, indicating an increase of N10bn.
In
2017, the first and only time the lawmakers made public details of their
then N125bn budget, Senators and members of the House of
Representatives spent N11.5bn on travel and transport; refreshment –
N1.3bn; legislative activities – N21.4bn; vehicles – N6.6bn and
consultancy – N5.88bn.
Other spending in their 2017 budget
included publicity and advertisements – N3bn; fuel and lubricant –
N2.1bn and security equipment – N1.5bn.
In all, the National Assembly spent N85.8bn on overhead, N14.9bn on capital, and N23.7bn for personnel costs in the 2017 budget.
The
breakdown showed that the National Assembly management spent N6.7bn on
personnel, N6.1bn on overhead and N2bn on capital, which totalled
N14.9bn; Senate: personnel N1.8bn, overhead N25bn and capital N4.4bn,
total N31.3bn; House: personnel N4. 9bn, overhead N39.6bn, and capital
N4.4bn, total N49bn; National Assembly Service Commission: personnel
N961m, overhead N1.1bn and capital N309m, total N2.4bn; and legislative
aides: personnel N8.9bn, overhead N534m and capital N150m, total N9.6bn.
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