Senate President Lawan assures of passage of 2022 budget this week

The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, on Monday assured that the 2022 budget proposal will be passed by the National Assembly before the end of the week.

Lawan, delivering a lecture titled: – The Legislature, Legislative Mandate and the Public – The Reality and The Public Perception – at the maiden Distinguished Parliamentarians Lecture Series organised by the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), Abuja, on Monday, emphasized that the Ninth National Assembly has made it a duty to pass the budget presented by the President before the end of December each year to ensure its implementation from January.

Lawan during the lecture clarified what he considered public misconceptions on the allowances of the National Assembly members.

The senate president stated that the percentage of the National Assembly budget in the federal budget is between 1.44 per cent in 2019 to 0.82 per cent in 2021. He protested that the National Assembly has been grossly underfunded in the last four years.

Lawan said that the total monthly salary of a member of the Senate is about N1.5 million and member of the House of Representatives about N1.3 million.

The senate president noted that the average office running cost for a senator is about N13 million while that of a member of the House of Representatives is N8 million.

Lawan also defended the federal lawmakers on public perception of corruption, constituency projects, purchase of operational vehicles for lawmakers, and the insinuations that the legislature was a rubber stamp.

President Muhammadu Buhari had presented the 2022 budget proposal of N16.39 trillion tagged ‘Budget of Economic Growth and Sustainability” to the joint session of the National Assembly on October 7, 2021.