There is nothing wrong with the fat allowances the federal lawmakers get quarterly, newly-appointed chairman of the House Services Committee, Yakubu Dogara, has said, insisting that his colleagues deserve the reward, not only because of the amount of work they do, but also because of the billions of naira they have saved for the country.

Mr Dogara, whose committee oversees the welfare of members as well as the budget and appropriation of the House, said the National Assembly gets a mere 1.5 percent allocation of the total federal budget yearly, and upbraided Nigerians, particularly journalists, for raising issues pertaining to the allowances of the lawmakers instead of asking questions on what the executive arm does with the remaining 98.5 percent.

The members of the House have been demanding an increment in their quarterly allowances from N27.2 million each to N42 million, while the senators want theirs raised from N45 million to N80 million. If the demand sails through, each member will get N168 million per annum, while each senator will take home N192 million.

“What I want to talk about is this issue of allowances that they heard that members have been collecting N27.2 million per head and senators N80 million. In fact, some media houses have speculated that what we now earn is N42 million per quarter. Now this quarterly payment has become an issue,” he said.

“I remember, even the agencies involved in fighting corruption are raising issues, particularly media reports suggest that the Chairperson of the EFCC once said that there is corruption in the National Assembly. To this, my response has been that what Nigerians forget is that the entire money in the allocation. If you check the 2010 budget, the entire allocation to the National Assembly is 1.5 per cent. Unfortunately, that is what most Nigerians focus on. But do we ask questions from those managing the remaining 98.5 per cent? Have we asked questions?

“This parliament has done a lot, but Nigerians do not appreciate because they do not even know what the parliament has done. When we came in 2008, in the course of our budget, we raised the allocation of the National Assembly from one per cent of the total budget to 1.5 per cent that year; we saved over N450 billion for the nation in unspent and un-remitted budgetary allocations. In 2009, more than N350 billion was paid back into the national treasury as unspent funds. Now, if you sum the two, we are almost hitting a trillion.”

Mr Dogara, who addressed journalists at the weekend, also said Nigerians should rather be worried about what happened to these unspent funds from 1999 to the time they came in, and start insisting that MDAs should return unspent money at the end of the year.

“What happened? How much would it have been? That is the investigation that I thought media houses would have done,” he said.

The lawmaker, who was until June 3 the chairman of the House Committee on Customs and Excise, said though the discovery of the unspent funds will not be used as justification, Nigerians have enough issues to raise with the executive arm, which manages most of the budget.

Holding back billions

The PDP member from Bauchi State also said he wondered why Nigerians are not asking institutions that generate revenue for government how much of this they hold back for themselves.

“And then we talk about revenue generating institutions of government where billions, if not trillions, are generated and not remitted.

As a result of our oversight functions, we have said, look there are limits that some these agencies can go,” he said. “That those monies must be paid back into the government treasury. Nobody has ever given us credit for that. We do not want to use that as justification for whatever allowances that we collect but certainly they are issues worth looking at.”

On the demand by the “progressives members” for investigation into the finances of the House, Mr Dogara said they did not avail themselves of its standing rules and other extant laws, in making their demand.

“They should have recourse to the resolutions of the House that was passed vis-à-vis the Rules of the House and the provisions of section 24 of the Legislative Powers and Privileges Act. But, unfortunately, that was not done,” he said.

“I have heard a lot of people allude to the fact that Integrity Group had similar campaign against Patricia Olubunmi Etteh when she was the Speaker and nothing happened to the members of the Integrity Group; they were not suspended, but they first went to the press.

“The appropriate response to this is that you cannot say you want to steal because there was thief somewhere that has not been caught. Once you know this is a rule, this is what we have adopted in the House, therefore, whatever the House follows is there in the rules and nobody has ever challenged it since we have been members in 1999.”

http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5589631-146/house_leader_defends_lawmakers_demand_for.csp

Is 180 million and 190 million now too small for our reps and senators?, the rate at which they have bastardized the word "millions"one would expect them to be paid in billions instead, Nigeria is moving forward, to an unknown destination

wow!!!

A country of the blind.All they talk about is money without an of inkling of what money is all about,it is money in the hands of pigs.

A country of the blind.All they talk about is money without an of inkling of what money is all about,it is like money in the hands of pigs.

Definately, no patroitic leader would support such a crazy amount in a country where civil servants collect as low as N15k as salary per month. He should try and find out what the military who stake their lives for all collect as alowances. He has just spoken like the bizmen whom they are. That is why they will buy a torchlight for N70k each, a TV for N500k each and build a toilet for N10m. And very soon they will celebrate our independence with N10b. Looters on the prowl!

There has to be a revolution.