2022 budget: FG earmarks N134bn for national assembly — highest since 2016

The federal government has budgeted N134 billion for the national assembly in the 2022 appropriation bill.

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.

Checks by TheCable showed that from the 2016 budget till that of 2021, the highest amount allocated so far has been N128 billion, which was in the 2021 appropriation bill.

A total of N115 billion was proposed in 2016 and 2017, respectively; N125 billion in 2018; N128 billion in 2019, and N115.2 billion in 2020.

The federal government had proposed N128 billion as allocation for the national assembly in the 2021 fiscal year, but the lawmakers increased it to N134 billion.

There are concerns that the national assembly may further increase the statutory allocation in the 2022 budget proposal.

There have been public debates over the huge salaries and allowances earned by federal lawmakers over the years.

Each senator gets as much as N13.5 million as running cost covering all their allowances, while a member of the house of representatives gets N8.5 million for same.

This is notwithstanding that as of 2020, close to 83 million Nigerians lived in poverty, while the country’s unemployment rate hit a new record high at 33.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Other items captured in the statutory transfers of the 2022 budget proposal show that N120 billion is earmarked for the National Judicial Council (NJC).

A total of N140 billion has been budgeted for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), while the National Human Rights Commission has N4.5 billion.

In the budget, N8,690,000,000 is proposed for the Public Complaints Commission (PCC); the Universal Basic Education (UBE) is allocated N108,101,599,701; the North-East Development Commission (NEDC) has N46,171,690,315, while the Niger-Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has N98,711,726,326.

Meanwhile, a proposal of N54,050,799,850 has been earmarked for the basic health care fund, while the National Agency for Science And Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) has been allocated N54,050,799,850.