Senate earmarks N182.5 billion for constituency projects

- The Senate is planning to secure a more permanent source of funding for senators' constituency projects

- The red chamber is insisting on the constituency projects despite the economic recession in the nation

- The move may cause a rift between the executive and the red chamber

The Nigerian Senate is moving on with its determination to secure constituency projects for senators despite the economic recession in the nation.

Senate earmarks N182.5 billion for constituency projects

According to The Guardian, the lawmakers have started a move to create a Constituency Development Fund to be domiciled in the federal ministry of agriculture and rural development, and financed through deductions from annual national revenues.

A bill for the new legislation, tagged “Constituency Development Fund Bill 2016”, has already been introduced to the Senate through its sponsor and Senate Leader, Mohammed Ali Ndume.

If the bill is passed into law, the Federal Government may forfeit 2.5 per cent of its annual budget as well as other monetary accruals to the fund.

If this legislation becomes functional by next year, the 2.5 per cent of the N7.3 trillion budget for 2017 which is N182.5 billion will go for constituency projects.

This means each senator, without a perking order, will be taking home N1.7 billion for constituency projects.

The move by the legislators may cause further rift between them and the executive arm of government which has the constitutional responsibilities of placing projects in budgets and executing them. The role of the National Assembly in this regard is to pass annual budgets.

It was learnt that the leadership of the National Assembly packaged the bill as a better and more acceptable arrangement to replace the earlier legislative plan to force the Federal Government to lose at least 20 per cent of its national budgets to the constituency projects.

Justifying the need to insert the constituency projects in the annual budgets, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki said: “I don’t think there is anything that ensures equity in the country like the constituency projects. Our responsibility is to provide the projects to our constituencies, full stop.”

According to the bill, “l.5 % and 1 % of the total revenue accruing to the Department under this Act shall be allocated for developmental projects at all federal constituencies and senatorial districts in the federation respectively.”

In another development, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Yakubu Dogara has disclosed that the federal government will refund about N20 billion to each state for funds they had spent on federal projects in their state.

Dogara made the disclosure when he paid a courtesy call on the traditional ruler of Ogwuekpele in Anambra state, Igwe Valentine Onyema Ogidiga, recently.