The House of Representatives has faulted the N134billion allocated to the National Assembly in the 2022 Appropriation bill.
Describing the budget as too small, the spokesman of the House, Benjamin Kalu, said the percentage of transfers to the National Assembly did not reflect the increase in the number of statutory transfers in the 2022 budget. He noted that when the House had a budget with aggregate lower expenditure, it was from N150billion to N128billion.
He said. “This concerns the House. It concerns the House because, the statutory transfer as we have mentioned, there is an increase from N484.49 billion to N768.28 billion and that is a reflection of a 58.7 per cent increase; an increase of about N283.79 billion. Do you know that this increase does not reflect in the amount that comes to the National Assembly? But remember, when we had a budget with lower aggregate expenditure, it was reduced from N150 billion to N128 billion though, we have the challenges our forex and the challenges of the purchasing power of the currency; what we have is N134 billion? Do you know what N134 billion represents for the statutory transfer? Let me give you this example; in 2019, we had N125 billion given to the NASS and that is at the level of 1.42 per cent of the N8.83 trillion. In 2020, we had N128 billion given to National Assembly. That was a reduction from 1.42 to 1.18 per cent of that N10.8 trillion. In 2021, we were given N134 billion which now represents 0.98 per cent of N13.1 trillion but this year, we are given N134 billion again which is now representing 0.82 per cent here,”