Amidst the controversy trailing the N9,000,000,000 Wardrobe allowance for Nigerian Legislators a shocking story has made it's way to the blogosphere.
Allegedly the national assembly is broke and will take loan to pay salaries??
Scratches head
The National Assembly Service Commission has stated that it is cash-strapped and cannot pay salaries of its legislators most of whom have completed their tour of duty and were either voted out or did not seek re-election.
Speaking to Guardian Newspaper, a top management official of the commission with knowledge of the financial state of the National Assembly revealed that the commission which gets N150 billion to run its affairs, had to take loans to pay salaries of lawmakers.
“Our account is in the red. We can’t even pay our staff salaries. In fact, I can confirm to you that we are yet to complete the payment of salaries of the Seventh Legislators that wound up their activities last June 9.
We have to obtain loans from banks to be able to pay them. So nobody is talking about the allowances of this Eighth Assembly now. We don’t know how we are going to handle it.
“I don’t know where the information came from that we are going to pay wardrobe allowance amounting to almost N9 billion.
“Whoever is peddling that rumour is really doing a disservice to the new presiding officers and members of
The Eighth National Assembly who may unduly come under pressure from their constituents. I can assure you that nobody knows when the Eighth Assembly members are going to get any kobo here.
“In fact, our financial situation is compounded by the inability of the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) to meet last Tuesday or yesterday as is normally the case, because even after the meeting, it takes more than two months before the Federal Government would source for money to its agencies. That is why you see that salaries of some agencies too are in arrears.
“What the Federal Government does after every FAAC is that it manages to settle the States and Local
Government counterparts of the allocation while it begins to source for its share of the allocation which is just on paper.
“The implication of this is that even if FAAC meets today or next month, we don’t expect to get our own share of the allocation released to us immediately until the next two months except President Muhammadu Buhari is going to reverse the trend.
“What is most disturbing to us as management at this time is how to even arrange for residential and office accommodation for the new presiding officers as the residences of both the Speaker and the Senate President were sold to former Speaker, Dimeji Bankole and immediate past Senate President, David Mark,” the official said.
Recall that the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yusuf Lasun, defended the yearly budget of N150 billion for the National Assembly since 2010.
It was reduced to N120 billion in the current 2015 budget, in the face of dwindling federal revenue.
Lasun however said the N150 billion which many Nigerians have criticised is not much compared to the entire budget of Nigeria, pointing out that the National Assembly budget was less than 3% of the total budget of the Federal Government.
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