N/Assembly to streamline running costs
The leadership of the National Assembly will soon introduce measures aimed at streamlining running costs of lawmakers, Daily Trust has learnt.
Sources told our correspondents that the measure would also affect some management staff.
Daily Trust had last week reported that both senators and members of the House of Representatives share about N46 billion annually as running costs, covering basic salary, vehicle maintenance, entertainment, utility, domestic staff, constituency, newspapers, recess allowance, wardrobe, personal assistant and housing.
Some top management staff told our correspondents that the National Assembly leadership would come up with some monetary measures to ensure prudent and transparent approach to the expenditure of both lawmakers and top civil servants.
It was further gathered that plans were underway to remove the National Assembly from a system known as ‘Charts of Account’ being developed by the executive arm to ‘Accounting Manual,’ which would take care of all peculiarities of federal legislature.
Additionally, the National Assembly would amend the Procurement Act to include a clause that would allow both the legislature and the judiciary to come up with own operational procurement manual, with guidance from the Accountant General of the Federation and the Auditor General of the Federation, without necessarily relying on that of the executive arm.
Asked when the legislature would begin these measures, one of the sources said “very soon.”
A document obtained by Daily Trust last week shows that out of the N115bn approved for the National Assembly in the 2016 budget, House of Reps got N47.2bn, Senate got N30.2bn, while the management was allocated N11.6bn.
The document showed further that N9.7bn was budgeted for legislative aides, N9.5bn for general service, N4.2bn for the National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS), N1.9bn for the National Assembly Service Commission, N379m for Service Wide Votes, N138m for House Public Accounts Committee and N115m for the Senate Public Accounts Committee.