…Asks Saraki, Dogara to throw open NASS spending to public

The Nigerian parliament secretly spent over N1.752 trillion in 17 years, a civil society organisation, which deals with budgeting and open governance, has said.

The group, BudgIT, released the figure in a statement it made available to Vanguard on Wednesday with a breakdown of the cash the National Assembly had allocated and spent between 2003 and 2019. The organisation however blasted the NASS for operating the budget in an opaque manner despite its claim to open governance and public pressure for it to open up its book for Nigerians to scrutinize the line items.

The group is shocked that the NASS, whose budget was a mere N23.5 billion in 2003 astronomically rose to N55.5 in 2005 and climbed to N150 billion in 2011 and maintained the same amount till 2014. BudgIT also wondered how the same NASS that had been spending N150 billion yearly was able to ‘manage’ a reduced appropriation of N115 billion between 2015 and 2016 and finally came down to N125 billion in 2017, N135 billion in 2018 and N125 billion in 2019.


Read more details here: http://zoxnews.com/nigeria/how-nass-secretly-spent-n1-752-trillion-in-17-years-budgit/