BY OBUTE JAMES
The annual budget of the Nigerian National Assembly is N139.5 billion which covers the federal lawmakers salaries & allawances, Legislative Institute, National Assembly Service Commission, legislatives aides among others.
Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki released the details of the National Assembly’s 2018 budget on Friday.
The details of the annual budget were contained in the 45-page document whoch shows that a total of N139,500,000,000 was budgeted for the National Assembly in 2018.
Acording to the docments, N35,582,085,699 was earmarked for the Senate, while the House of Representatives got N57,425,137,793.
N10,202,095,928 was budgeted for legislative aides, the National Assembly office got N15,389,235,912, while the National Assembly Commission got N2,736,081,266.
The National Assembly Legislative Institute got N4,373,813,596, while N1,145,143,254 was appropriated for service-wide vote of the Legislature.
Saraki in his verified Twitter handle @SPNigeria on Friday, in a tweet publicly addressed to BudgIT.
Saraki had tweeted,
“Dear @BudgITng:
“Find the details of the 2018 Budget of the National Assembly here: http://nass.gov.ng/document/download/10247 …
“This is in accordance with the commitment of the leadership of the 8th National Assembly to accountability and transparency. #OpenNASS.”
BudgIT Nigeria, a civic tech organisation that claims to “raise the standards of transparency, citizen engagement and accountability most especially in public finance,” said that, since 2015, it had consistently demanded that the annual allocations of National Assembly be public.
BudgIT said that it does this alongside another civil society organisation, Enough is Enough Nigeria, which claims to promote a culture of good governance in the society.