Wonderful!! N’Assembly Reduces its own budget by 25%

The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, said
on Thursday that the National Assembly has reduced
its overhead in the 2015 budget by 25 percent in
response to the economic realities in the country.
Ekweremadu said the action would also help to boost
the capital expenditure quotient in the 2015 fiscal
year.
He said, "This year, because our money is on first line
charge and comes as statutory transfer, the executive
could not have tampered with it. They brought our
overhead the way it should be in the 2015
Appropriation Bill.
"But on our own, we in the National Assembly looked
at the state of the economy and decided to cut our
overhead cost by 25 percent. We challenged the
executive to go back and do the same.
"They accepted the challenge and cut further their
overhead budget. So, we are hoping that Nigerians
would see a remarkable improvement in the capital-
overhead ratio in the 2015 budget."
The deputy senate president stated this in Abuja at
the opening of a two-day workshop organised by the
State Accountability and Voice Initiative and the
United Kingdom Department for International
Development for Speakers and Clerks to the 36 State
Assemblies.
The workshop centred on the implications of
financial autonomy for state Houses of Assembly and
strategies for its effective implementation.
Ekweremadu described the creation of a first line
charge for the state Houses of Assembly as "one of
the biggest achievements of the current
constitutional amendment efforts in the pursuit of
good governance, accountability, and fiscal
federalism in Nigeria."
He said, "With a first line charge on the Consolidated
Revenue Fund, the state legislatures have become
fully self-regulating, self-budgeting, self-reliant and
wholly-autonomous from executive control.
"In other words, we have effectively averted a
situation where he who pays the piper dictates the
tune.
"We have carefully enthroned the equality of all arms
of government and done away with a situation where
state legislatures go cap in hand to the executive
arm."