N’Assembly Budget Silent on Breakdown of Lawmakers’ Salaries

For the first time since 1999, the National Assembly wednesday released a breakdown of its budget. However, the breakdown of the 2016 budget for the federal legislature, which was obtained by THISDAY, only provided information on the capital and recurrent expenditure of the Senate, House of Representatives, the management of the National Assembly, as well as its research institute.

The breakdown did not reveal detailed line-by-line sub-heads as expected by Nigerians, as the figures were lumped together and were opaque on how the monies will be spent.

The breakdown also did not reflect the earnings of the lawmakers, which Nigerians have demanded to know, effectively entrenching the absence of transparency on the salaries and allowances paid to federal lawmakers in country.The budget breakdown showed that their earnings were only listed under the recurrent expenditure sub-head of the budget, just as projects to be executed under the National Assembly capital expenditure framework, were also not revealed.

The National Assembly has come under severe attack since the resumption of democracy in 1999 over allegations that members’ earnings are humongous and unjustifiable relative to the services they render.

Some foreign media organisations have also joined the campaign with reports that Nigerian lawmakers earn higher salaries than most of their counterparts across the globe.

These allegations have put members of the National Assembly under immense pressure to make the details of their budget transparent.

However, the breakdown in the one-page document showed that N26.9 billion was allocated to recurrent expenditure for the Senate and N3.258 billion for capital expenditure, totalling N30 billion.

The House of Representatives was allotted N44.55 billion for recurrent spending and N2.652 billion for capital spending, amounting to N47.212 billion, while the National Assembly management got N10 billion as recurrent expenditure and N1.576 as capital expenditure, totalling N11.625 billion.

Also, the National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS), National Assembly’s think-tank, was allocated N5.044 billion as capital expenditure and N3.383 billion as recurrent expenditure. The total allocation to NILS was N8.43 billion.

The National Assembly Service Commission got N1.858 billion as recurrent expenditure and N113.7 million for capital projects, general services was allotted N8.669 billion and N789.7 million as recurrent and capital expenditure respectively, the Senate Committee on Public Accounts got N115 million, its House equivalent got N138 million, legislative aides were given N9.668 billion, while the service order vote got N374.4 billion.