NASS Expenditure On Travels, Meals, Generators A Call For Restructuring-Analysts

NASS Expenditure On Travels, Meals, Generators A Call For Restructuring-Analysts 
 
Having remained a one-liner document shrouded in secrecy for many years, details of the Budget of Nigerian National Assembly goes into public domains this year and while many feel the expenses are outrageous, others see it as a call for political restructuring, writes TAYO OLANIPEKUN
 
Some of the headers from the proposed Budget of the National Assembly for 2017 have elicited comments from Nigerians, following the public presentation last week of the details of the official documents for the first time in about one decade. 
Apart from the international and local travels that the lawmakers plan to spend N11.5bn on and the allocation for Contingency that is in excess of N2bn, three other items, Meals and Refreshments, Medical Services and Fuelling and Maintenance of Power Generators for the National Assembly will also require a total sum of N4, 167, 663, 475, revealed the budget of that arm of government for the year. 
The official document shows that Medical Expenses alone for the Senate, House of Representatives and the National Assembly Office totals N1, 430, 322, 717.This amount also includes a sum of N3, 019, 896 to be spent on burials and condolences earmarked for the National Institute of Legislative Studies. 
Closely following it is the sum of N1, 422, 746, 320 that will go for meals and refreshments for the lawmakers this year, while a total of N 1, 314, 594, 438, according to the budget, is also meant for the fuelling and maintenance of power generator sets. The generators will service buildings including the White House and New Buildings II and III as well as the Annex I and II Complex. All these are coming at a time many believe a belt tightening measure is required as the country tries to wriggle out of recession and infrastructure is lacking to a marked extent. 
However, Managing Director of Cowry Asset Management Limited, Johnson Chukwu, said rather than focusing on the unit cost of maintaining the legislators, the issues with the Budget of the National Assembly should be looked at from both political and structural angles. 
He says real restructuring is required, much as the country also needs to ask if it really needs a bicameral legislature and an expensive federal system of government it practices. Chukwu says if the nation’s 109 Senators alone were to carry out legislative duties, cost of maintaining the 360 House of Representative members and their retinue of staff and aides would be put into other use. 
“You know the legislators are not paupers, they’re not at the lowest rung of the ladder. The amount in question for the medical expenses, N3m per head flat rate, might not even be sufficient for certain medical care, including medical insurance premium abroad,” he said, adding that if that is multiplied by 360, the nation would save over N1bn on medicals alone for legislators as the cumulative figures are naturally high. 
In the same vein, he is of the view that if the regional government is practiced, a region like the South West with just one governor collecting only N1bn, for instance, would save about N5bn Security Votes of five remaining states monthly, which could also be deployed for other developmental purposes. 
According to Chukwu, road that is cement-based will not cost more than N200m per kilometer. Thus, about N60bn saved in Security Votes in that region would do about 300 kilometres of highway in one year and 1, 200 kilometres in four years, he postulates, asserting that lack of good political structure accounts for the reason Nigeria is not developing. 
Opeyemi Agbaje is the CEO of RCC Advisory Services and he says the National Assembly should be commended for removing the veil on their budget this year. Indeed, he posits that instead of dissipating energy on scrutinizing the budget of the Assembly which is just 1.6 per cent of the nation’s budget, the “Executive that spends all the money” should have their budget scrutinized with a view to “re-orientate spending towards the good of the masses and not a tiny elite.” 
Agbaje says while a sense of outrage of many people about the figures may be justified, it should also be realized that the whole spending approach of governments at all levels are designed to create poverty. “The executive arm of government spends 95 per cent of the budget mainly on about 3 million government workers, and this rarely shows empathy for the populace as it is clearly a system deliberately designed to create poverty,” says Agbaje. 
The real challenge of the budget, according to Agbaje, is re-orientating the national spending towards the good of the entire populace and the public should also continue putting the National Assembly under pressure to examine their spending so as to prune those that seem outrageous. He says the Judiciary, too, should not be spared in the scrutiny of the statutory transfers. 
Commenting on the N10bn increase in the National Assembly budget for 2017, Chuku says to be fair and balance, the lawmakers reduced their budget from N150bn in 2015 to N115bn in 2016 in response to public outcry. “It seems they believe the economy is recovering and concluded that they should go back to their normal level,” he says, adding that lack of empathy for the generality of Nigerians by a tiny elite when it comes to public spending is the real issue.

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