The economic downturn experienced across the country has decided to cast its net over the 469 National Assembly members who according to reports are yet to be paid their august salaries and are feeling the negative effects of being hit financially.
According to a member of the Senate’s Ad-hoc committee on power, Senator Mao Ohuabunwa (PDP, Abia North), in an interview with journalists on the activities of the committee, disclosed that the much expected public hearing on power sector could be put on hold for now due to non-availability of funds to run it.
He said the cash crunch had no doubt prevented them as lawmakers over the months from carrying out their legislative functions effectively and is also largely responsible for crippling the oversight activities of already established committees across the two chambers.
“We cannot carry out our functions effectively because there is no money in the system,” he said.
He, however, added that the problem of funding being faced by the National Assembly at present may perhaps be due to the expensive nature of a bi-cameral legislature and, in fact, the presidential system of government the country is running.
“Part of the problems we are facing now is the problem of funding. I want to tell you outright because he who wears the shoe knows where it pinches.
“Our major problem now, is funding. There is no money in the system. Running the parliament is expensive. The presidential system of government, in particular, with bi- cameral legislature is an expensive part of democracy, so you can’t eat your cake and have it.
“So, now people keep saying how much is the budget of the parliament, amount of salaries of the lawmakers, etcetera, forgetting that there are several sub-heads in the parliament. In fact, now we cannot do our job effectively. We cannot do our functions effectively because there is no money.
“For example, we are supposed to start the public hearing on the power sector on the 11th of this month, but we couldn’t because of lack of money. The idea was to have a stakeholders’ meeting, the just ended interactive session for 2, 3 days from 8-10 September. Then on 11th, we start the public hearing which was supposed to end on the 15th day of September, 2015, but unfortunately we could not do that because there is no money in the system to run the committee and perform our functions effectively.
“So what we have decided for now is to mellow down a bit till when the Senate resumes for plenary sessions and see how we can raise money, but before then, we believe money would have been released into the system.
“In fact, as it is today (Wednesday), we have not collected our August salary as federal lawmakers and, by extension, the entire legislative staff of the federal lawmakers.