NASS keeps promise, publishes its budget details

The National Assembly onThursday, for the first time, published the details of its budget, beginning with the 2017 budget, to underscore transparency as earlier promised by the President of the 8th Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki.

Revealing to newsmen on Thursday, Senate President, Bukola Saraki, in a series of tweets, said that the “budget breakdown for @Nassnigeria has been released.”

“We said we will, and we did,” Saraki said in a report from Vanguard.

It would be recalled that Senate President had earlier promised Nigerians that he’ll heed the calls for an Open National Assembly (#OpenNASS) in order to ensure everyone gets to see the line-item allocations of the legislative arm.

The Appropriations Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives separately presented their harmonised reports of the budget for consideration and subsequent passage on Thursday.

The National Assembly budget which went from a one line item to a detailed 33 pages has been hailed from various quarters as being a promise kept by the leadership of the 8th senate.

The budget showed that the National Assembly has budgeted N125bn as against N115bn in 2016.

A summary of the Proposed #2017Budget as made public by the Senate showed that the National Assembly gets N14.9bn. While Senate gets a total of N31.3bn, the House of Representatives gets N49bn.

The National Assembly Service Commission gets N2.4bn while the legislative aides get a budget of N9.6bn.

Also, Public Accounts Committee (Senate) gets N118.9m while that of Reps gets N142.7m.

The breakdown further shows that the General Services gets N12.5bn; National Assembly Legislative Institute, N4.3bn while the Service wide vote gets N391.3bn.