Benjamin Kalu, spokesperson of the house of representatives,
says the allocation for the national assembly in 2022 budget is “not enough”.
The federal government budgeted N134 billion for the
national assembly in the 2022 appropriation bill.
Checks showed that the amount is the highest annual
allocation ever proposed by the executive for the national assembly since the
present administration came into power in 2015.
This is despite the concerns raised by Nigerians about the
huge salaries and allowances earned by federal lawmakers over the years.
Speaking at a media briefing on Thursday, Kalu said the N134
billion is not sufficient for the lawmakers to operate the various committees
and carry out their oversight function.
“This is an interesting part that concerns the house, which
many people are afraid of discussing, but which I took my time today to
mention. And that has to do with the statutory transfers,” he said.
“If you do a proper analysis of statutory transfers for
2021, you will be seeing N768.28 billion and this is an increase of about 58.7
percent from the last one which was about N484.49 billion, which means that
what was added to it was N283.79 billion. Now, this increase, one would have
expected that it would impact positively on the budget of the national
assembly; it is a common reasoning.
“Over the years, you
have increased the budget from one level to the other and the percentage of the
oversighting arm of government keeps dropping. I took my time; I argued that
when we had budgets with lower aggregate expenditure, it was reduced from N150
billion to N128 billion. But overtime, this has dwindled more and as it is
dwindling, consideration is not made to the volatile reaction of the foreign
exchange.
“Consideration is not being made to the reactions in our
economy, consideration is not being made to the purchasing power of our
currency. I took my time to x-ray the 2019 budget and the percentage of the
budget of the national assembly against the general budget, 2019 to date — you
will be shocked to hear that it has been dwindling towards 0.1 percent.
“I will tell you to your shock that in 2019, the comparative
percentile relationship between the budget of the national assembly and the
entire budget was 1.42 percent in 2019, and that was N125 billion on a general
budget of N8.83 billion.
“In 2020, what the national assembly got was N128 billion
which represented 1.18 percent of the N10.8 trillion (budget). In 2021, we had
N134 billion against N13.1 trillion and the percentage went down again to 0.98
percent.
“Now, we are coming to 2022. While the dollar has gone from
where it was to over N500, our budget is still the same N134 billion. The
national budget has moved from N13 trillion to N16 trillion. The budget of the
national assembly remains at N134 billion, which is now no longer as big as
0.98 percent of last year; it is now 0.82 percent of the budget.
“Many would ask, ‘why this analysis?’ Many people would ask,
‘are you saying that the money is not enough?’ That is the truth. If you look
at the committees and their responsibilities — the work they need to do — they
need money to do it and the purchasing power of the money has gone low. It is
affecting them, especially on oversight functions.
“The amount of money needed to go on oversight (visits) is
no longer sufficient for the job to be done. I stood up (on the floor) to call
on the national assembly to review this N134 billion, because there is no need
for trying to sound acceptable to Nigerians and we are unable to do the job
that you have asked us to do. We can be praised for not changing the budget,
but the job you asked us to do remains undone.
“There is no wisdom in that. The wisdom is in you
understanding that the purchasing power of the budget of the national assembly
can no longer take them to fulfil responsibility assigned to them by the
constitution. It has been going down from 2019 till date, and this is the
reality.
“The reality of the
national assembly budget at N134 billion, I can assure you, and you can throw
the stones and do the name-calling, and call us anything you want to call us,
but I am willing to take the name-calling as long as the truth is said outside
here.”
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