The N16 billion allocated as annual running cost for the National Assembly is inadequate and should be doubled, a Member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yunusa Abubakar, has said.
Abubakar, who is a Member of the House Committee on House Services, spoke on a Channels Television programme on Tuesday.
The Herald had reported Thursday that spokesman of the House, Benjamin Kalu described the National Assembly as “broke“.
He lamented that while the National Assembly annually appropriates funds for other arms and organs of government to function effectively, it could not allocate sufficient funds to itself because of fear of backlash from Nigerians.
Reacting, Abubakar said, “The assembly is not broke as such, but when you talk about inadequacy, the amount allocated to the national assembly is somewhat grossly inadequate to run the structure that exists in the assembly.
“It is obvious the N16 billion naira allocated to the national assembly management is not enough. According to the bureaucracy ( the national assembly administration), to maintain our chamber alone, they are spending over N40 million monthly.”
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Asked how much the National Assembly needed as running cost, Abubakar said, “going by our need assessment, the amount should have been doubled.
“Everybody knows that we do live coverage and we are charged how many millions for it. Running it is very costly.
“What is taking the chunk of the money is how to conduct the day to day business of the legislative arm of government.”