Anger has continued to trail the decision by the National Assembly to earmark N70billion for its members out of the N819billion federal supplementary budget passed by the legislature last week.
The lawmakers had said the N70billion was earmarked to support “the working conditions of National Assembly members.” But many Nigerians have described the N70billion budgetary allocation for lawmakers as insensitive while majority of Nigerians are grappling with economic hardship heightened by the removal of fuel subsidy.
In a statement the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, an advocacy group urged the Senate President, Mr Godswill Akpabio, and Speaker of House of Representatives, Mr Tajudeen Abbas, “to drop the scandalous plan to spend N40bn on 465 exotic and bulletproof cars for members and principal officials, and N70bn as ‘palliatives’ for new members.”
SERAP urged them to “repeal the 2022 Supplementary Appropriation Act to reduce the budget for the National Assembly by N110bn, reflect the current economic realities in the country and address the impact of the removal of fuel subsidy on the over 137 million poor Nigerians.”
It gave the National Assembly seven days to retrace its steps, threatening it would go to court should its demand be ignored. Also, human rights activist and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, described the move as callous and a breach of the constitution of the country.
“Since the Assembly complex is not owned by legislators, who are merely political birds of passage, such allocation cannot be termed by anyone as a palliative to the legislators.”
