An insightful Businessday research has just revealed how much the current National Assembly has spent in the last four years doing basically nothing in terms of passing bill. Here are the chilling stats;
1. The 7th National Assembly (2011 -2015) inaugurated on 6th June, 2011, has managed to pass only 104 bills out of the 1,063 bills before it in the three and half years since inauguration,
2. The prorated cost of running the 7th assembly since its inauguration in 2011 till date, amounts to N573.2 billion ($3.18 billion), meaning N5.73 billion was spent on average by the legislature to pass one bill.
3. The NASS budgeted a total of N682.7 billion between 2011 and 2014 to run its legislative activities made up of N232.7 billion for 2011, and N150 billion each for 2012, 2013, and 2014.
4. The average Nigerian Senator earns N353.7 million or $2.1 million per annum, made up of a basic salary (N2.48 m) and numerous allowances, including, constituency (N4.96 m), hardship (N1.2 m), accommodation (N4.9 m) and car allowance (N9.9 m), among others.
5. This compares with $104,000 per annum for South African legislators, $74, 500 for Kenyan, $46, 500 for Ghanaians, $174,000 for U.S, and $157, 600 per annum for Brazilian legislators.
6. In terms of lawmakers’ salaries as a ratio of GDP per capita, the gap is even much wider.
7. While the salary of a Nigerian lawmaker is 700 times the country’s GDP per person of $3,000 that of a British member of parliament is just 2.7 times.
8. This means it will take an average Nigerian worker about 700 years to earn the yearly salary of a Nigerian legislator.
9. The NASS budget for 2014 is also equivalent to 13.3 percent of the FG’s 2014 capital expenditure budget of N1.12 trillion.
You can get the rest of the chilling article here Businessday