Leadership (Abuja)
Christiana Esebonu
23 December 2008
Abuja — Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), a non-governmental organisation, on Monday criticised the members of the National Assembly for what it calls their 'ever expanding penchant for extravagance in the use of public funds' even as it canvassed the radical reduction in the proposed funds allocated to the National Assembly members for foreign trips and entertainments in the 2009 budget. The Rights Group also carpeted the legislators for abysmally failing to make good laws that will improve the living condition of Nigerians in the outgoing year 2008.
HURIWA upbraided the legislators at the National Assembly against the backdrop of revelation in a National Daily that the 109 Senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives will spend a total of N15 billion on foreign and local trips in 2009.
The Senators are expected to spend N1.85 billion for international trips and another N3.2 billion on local trips under the 2009 appropriation Bill as presented by President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua to the National Assembly recently.
On its part, the House of Representatives is to spend N5.062 billion on international trips and another N5.46 billion on local trips, thereby bringing the total travels expenditure of the Federal House of Representatives to N11 billion in 2009.
As proposed in the draft copy of the 2009 appropriation bill, the Senators will spend N783 million on refreshments and meals while the House of Representatives has been allocated N3.11 billion for its refreshments and meals.
The Senators will get N800 million as sitting allowances while the Federal House of Representatives will receive N2 billion as sitting allowances in the coming year.
The Rights Group, through its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, in a media release issued to Newsmen in Abuja on Monday, criticised 'these obscenely massive wage package' organised for the National Assembly members at a time that Nigeria is facing the crushing effects of the so-called financial meltdown and also at a time that the country is witnessing huge financial deficits because of the sudden crash in the crude oil prices in the international market.
The Rights Group particularly condemned what it calls the persistent penchant of the National legislators for primitive acquisition of wealth at the expense of the large army of unemployed Nigerian graduates and millions of heavily impoverished citizens who are unsure of the sources of their next meals.
HURIWA stated that in the last nine years of civil democracy in Nigeria, the National Assembly members had become the world's most traveled legislators and wondered whether the Nigerian legislators were elected by their constituents locally to engage in the genuine business of lawmaking which they have largely failed to accomplish or to gallivant and globetrot all over the world so as to satisfy the legislators' primitive quest for self aggrandisement.
"The legislators must cut down drastically on the allocations reserved for themselves for foreign trips in the year 2009 because it is immoral and constitutionally unacceptable that while millions of Nigerians are unsure of the sources of their next meals because of mass poverty in the land, the lawmakers, who should concentrate and make good implementable laws to transform the Nigerian society for the better, have rather chosen to abandon their primary duty of law making to embark on foreign trips as tourists.
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