HOW 120 BILLION NAIRA IS SHARED

Contrary to the belief that the annual budget of the National Assembly is carted home by the 109 Senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives,an investigation by a leading Nigerian tabloid Vanguard has revealed that there are about 4,000 individuals, 145 committees, nine local and foreign bodies as well as four agencies that will share the N120 billion allocated to the federal legislature in the 2015 budget. Part of the money is also to be expended on capital expenditure, general services, packaging of public hearings, litigations, hiring of consultants, oversight functions and foreign and local travels. Documents obtained from the Ministry of Finance and the National Assembly late last week indicated that against the huge figures about funds available in the National Assembly, the current assembly has the smallest allocation of N120bn, which is just about 3% percent of the N4.5 trillion 2015 national budget and N30bn less than what was allocated to the same institution in the last five years. The reduction in budgetary allocation for the National Assembly this year was initiated by the lawmakers in response to the dwindling revenue of the federation. Sunday Vanguard discovered that 7,200 individuals draw salaries and allowances from the National Assembly and these include 109 Senators, 360 members of the Federal House of Representatives, 13 commissioners in the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC), 3,208 members of staff of the commission and 337 members of the management staff, 3,024 legislative aides, seven members of board of the National Institute of Legislative Studies (NIALS) with 115 staff of the institute. Also, funds are allocated to servicing of the 54 Senate standing committees and 91 House of Representatives standing committees; the legislative institution also fulfills its financial obligations to bodies like the inter- Parliamentary Union, Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, Pan African Parliament, ECOWAS Parliament, African, Carribean and Pacific- EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, Shoora/Arab Parliament and National Conference of State Legislatures. From the fund, it was discovered that a senator gets a monthly salary of N1.4 million while his colleague in the House gets N1.1 million a month. The breakdown of the monthly salary include wardrobe allowance of N42,216 and N41,358 for Senator and Representative respectively; N337, 733 and N330,868 for Housing Allowance. Other components of the monthly salary include basic salary (N168, 866 for Senators and N165,435 for Reps), vehicle maintenance (N126,650 and N124,075), entertainment, utility, domestic staff, constituency, newspaper, recess and personal assistant. The salaries and allowances, are fixed by the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) which is constitutionally charged with the responsibility of determining the remuneration appropriate for all political, judicial and public office holders. The National Assembly also spend money on General services which includes but not limited to maintenance of its huge complex, fueling of power generating plants, insurance of building, vehicles and other capital assets. Funds are allocated to purchase of utility vehicles, purchase of office equipment as well as rehabilitation and repairs of the National Assembly complex. Sunday Vanguard discovered that members of the National Assembly are not allocated funds for constituency projects. They are neither given funds to execute projects in their constituencies nor do they prequalify contractors for such projects. The practice is that, some relevant Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the executive arm of government allow members of the National Assembly to indicate where certain projects should be sited in their constituencies. The procurement processes as well as funding for these projects remain functions of the executive.