The National Assembly and the 36 state assemblies of the federation as well as their agencies will spend about N724bn this year, an analysis of their 2024 budgets has shown.
Further findings also showed that the salaries and allowances for federal and state lawmakers would cost the country about N50bn this year.
This means that the federal and state governments earmarked N673.94bn for the national and state assemblies as well as their related agencies in the 2024 budget.
The salaries and allowances are based on data collated from a document obtained from the website of the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Commission.
However, the overall allowances exceed the reported figure due to undisclosed amounts for several of the lawmakers.
An analysis shows that 109 members of the senate will get N8.67bn in salaries and allowances while 360 members in the green chamber will get N24.43bn in salaries and allowances.
A breakdown shows that the annual basic salary of the President of the Senate is N2.48m each year (about N9.92m in four years) while that of the Deputy President is N2.31m yearly (about N9.24m in four years).
Out of 19 allowances assigned to the Senate President and his deputy, only five allowances were assigned a specific figure.
The disclosed allowances include constituency allowance (250 per cent of the basic annual salary), duty tour allowance (N50,000 per night), Estacode ($1,300 per night), Recess (10 per cent of the basic annual salary) and severance gratuity (300 per cent of the basic annual salary).
The allowances of the Senate President will gulp about N33.29m, which includes a N6.21m annual constituency allowance, N248,424.25 annual recess allowance, and N7.45m for severance gratuity, which is paid at the end of the tenure.
The allowances of the Deputy Senate President are expected to cost the nation about N30.94m, which includes N5.77m annual constituency allowance, N230,916.70 annual recess allowance, and N6.93m for severance gratuity.
Other senators get N2.03m as basic annual salary (a total of N8.12m in four years) and a total allowance of N72,137,440 for each of them.
The salaries of the 107 senators will cost N868.3m, while their allowances will cost N7.72bn.
In the section for the salaries and allowances of other senators, out of the 20 allowances mentioned, only 15 were disclosed.
Similarly, the Speaker of the House gets an annual salary of N2.48m (about N9.92m in four years), while the deputy gets N2.29m (about N9.16m in four years).
The allowances of the Speaker are about N18.33m which includes N2.48m annually for constituency allowance, N247,711 annual recess allowance, and N7.43m severance gratuity.
The allowance of the deputy speaker was pegged at about N17.16m and this includes annual N2.29m for constituency allowance, N288,703 for recess, and N6.86m for severance gratuity.
Other members of the House of Representatives get N1.99m each as basic annual salary (a total of N7.94m in four years), while each got N58.76m as allowance.
The salaries of the 358 House of Representatives members will cost N2.84bn while their allowances are estimated at N21.04bn.
Also, the Speaker of a state assembly will be paid N1.64m (N6.56m in four years) as an annual basic salary while the deputy speaker gets N1.45m (N5.8m in four years).
In total, the 36 speakers will get about N59.04m as annual basic salary or N236.16m in four years while the 36 deputies will get about N52.1m as annual basic salary or N208.40m in four years.
The allowances of the speaker will gulp about N5.58m (N22.30m in four years) which includes N409,968 annual constituency allowance, N163,987.50 annual leave allowance, and N3.28m severance gratuity.
The deputy speaker will be paid about N4.92m (N19.67m in four years), and this includes N361,495 constituency allowance, N144,598 for annual leave, and N2.89m severance gratuity.
In total, the basic allowances for the 36 speakers and their deputies will cost the nation N1.51bn.
There are 784 members in the 36 state Houses of Assembly each of whom is entitled to N1.34m annual salary or N5.34m in four years and an allowance of N12.97m.
In total, the 784 members cost their states about N4.19bn in salary and N10.17bn in allowance.
Meanwhile, there are indications that the government approved a total sum of N294.7bn for the National Assembly, its affiliate bodies and infrastructure construction.
Details of the National Assembly’s 2024 budget showed that the assembly office got N36.73bn for its activities. The Senate got an envelope funding of N49.14bn while the Representatives got N78.63bn.
The political arm of the National Assembly has the Senate and the House of Representatives with 109 and 360 members, respectively, while the administrative/bureaucratic arm has the National Assembly Management headed by the Clerk of the National Assembly and the National Assembly Service Commission.
The federal parliament has affiliate bodies including the National Assembly Service Commission which got funding of N12.33bn, the National Assembly Institute of Legislative and Democratic Studies (the academic arm) got N9.1bn while the headquarters got N4.5bn.
Further checks showed that the legislative aides were given N20.34bn, the Public Account Committee of the Senate got N130m while N150m went to that of the green chamber.
Office of the retired clerks and permanent secretaries were allotted N1.2bn, the service-wide vote was N15.2bn; general services got N30.81bn, National Assembly Library building got N12.12bn while books procurement for the library got N3bn; Appropriation Committee Department – Senate (N200m); Appropriation Committee Department – House (N200m). The construction of the NASC will also gulp N10bn.
Madukwe B. Nwabuisi is an accomplished journalist renown for his fearless reporting style and extensive expertise in the field. He is an investigative journalist, who has established himself as a kamikaze reporter.
