The Federal Government has slashed the total budgetary allocation to the National Assembly for 2011 by N45bn.

The cut, contained in the 2011 budget breakdown submitted to the National Assembly by President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday, is coming amid public outcry over the jumbo salaries and allowances being received by federal legislators.

According to the breakdown, the National Assembly will receive N111.23bn next year as against the N156bn allocated to it in the 2010 budget.

A further breakdown of the Assembly’s financial estimates for 2011, shows that N108.03bn is for recurrent (non-debt) expenditure, and only N3.21bn for capital expenditure.

Out of the N111.23bn; the Senate will get N29.58bn, the House of Representatives, N47.88bn; and the National Assembly Office, N10.18bn.  

The National Assembly Service Commission will receive N1.3bn; legislative aides, N7.88bn; Senate Committee on Public Accounts, N128.2m; House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts, N138.95m and General Service Office, N14.19bn.

The wage adjustment for civil servants as agreed between the Federal Government and the organised labour is expected to gulp N41.49bn out the N4.1tn federal budget for 2011.

According to the breakdown, the recurrent expenditure of the executive (non-debt) for next year is N1.76tn. Out of this, Ministries, Departments and Agencies will receive N699.52bn, while federal executive bodies will get N9.15bn. 

The Federal Government also allocated N78.52bn to the amnesty programme. The sum is expected to cover the payment of stipends to repentant ex-militants, their feeding allowance and reintegration, as well as other components of the programme.

The Independent National Electoral Commission will also receive N48.38bn, including N3bn for logistics support.

Although the total service wide votes of the budget were put at N397.1bn, the total recurrent (non-debt) expenditure for the MDAs is N53.43bn.

The Ministry of Education has the highest recurrent expenditure among the MDAs with an allocation of N304.3bn, followed by the Nigeria Police Force formations and commands with N293.5bn.

Defence has a total recurrent of N288.67bn, and it is closely followed by the Ministry of Health with N202.3bn.

In contrast, the Ministry of Education has the sum of N35.04bn as capital budget. TOOOOO SMALL  

The Senate, which will take the budget’s second reading on Tuesday before embarking on recess, had extended the 2010 budget implementation period from December 31, 2010 to March 2011.

The President of the Senate, Mr. David Mark, during the budget presentation, had promised that the National Assembly would champion the cut in the recurrent expenditures of the different arms of government.

“The National Assembly, in the discharge of its responsibilities, will, from the 2011 Appropriation Bill, re-evaluate these budget aggregates and other major macroeconomic variables across the board for all government MDAs and other arms of government to lower the personnel and overhead expenditures, and improve the level of appropriations for capital expenditures,” he said.

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