After increasing their spending from N125 to N139.5 billion, the National Assembly has kept to itself the details of its 2018 budget, Daily Trust reports.

On May 16, when the National Assembly passed the country’s budget, its own budget was returned to a single line item without details.

Last year, following pressure from various stakeholders, the leadership of the National Assembly released its budget details, a development that gave the public the opportunity to scrutinize the allocations.

In the budget that has been transmitted to President Muhammad Buhari for assent, the lawmakers allocated N139.5bn to the legislature as a line item under statutory transfers.

Daily Trust reports that 18 days after the 2018 budget was passed, the National Assembly was yet to reveal the details, unlike what obtained last year when the details were released same day the national budget was passed.

In a phone interview, a lawmaker said aside the details of the 2018 budget, the implementation of 2017 budget should be looked into.

“The issue is not only about the details, the focus should be how that of last year was spent. Even if it is in a closed session, it should be discussed. It is only when this is done that we can be talking of transparency,” he said.

He said if the expenditure of MDAs were scrutinized during budget defence, similar process should be done to the National Assembly budget for transparency.

Efforts to get the reaction of the spokesperson of the Senate, Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi (APC,Niger) yielded no result as he neither picked his call, nor reply the text message sent to him.

House spokesman, Abdulrazak Namdas (APC, Adamawa) when contacted said the budget details would be made available in due course.

“We’ll make it available with time, but for now, we don’t have the details handy,” he said.

https://www.dailytrust.com.ng/n-assembly-keeps-own-budget-details-secret-254829.html

They always do.

They are ashamed of their own spending, thus the secret surrounding their spending. But is it really a secret?

Sanusi Lamido,former governor of CBN made us realize that 25% of national budget goes to these greedy,lazy politicians(lazy because they pass the budget only after about 7 months). 360 members of house of reps and 109 federal senators make 469. 469 Nigerians take 25%. Well,let's say federal executive members takes about 30% too. This means less than a thousand people in Nigeria takes more thanhalf of our national budget, leaving less than 50% for remaining over 200 million Nigerians. How then can Nigeria develop? Never ever! As long as things remain the same, Nigeria will remain the same or worse off.

The present arrangement is faulty.

Secret for where? Everything will be reveal to general public soon.

I've lost a lot in trying to understand these egocentric radicals.

Osibanjo has made me not to think of Nigerian problems as much again by saying; "Governance in Nigeria is a spiritual warfare"