Nigerian Lawmakers Seek To Spend 23.7 Bln Naira On Severance, Gratuity, Increased budget deficit for 2019

Nigerian parliament has approved 23.7 billion naira as gratuity and severance package for its outgoing members, this was contained in the 2019 budget passed on Tuesday by the National Assembly.

The amount which would also cater for the allowance of the incoming parliamentarians were contained in the service-wide votes.
However, detail of how it would be disbursed was not disclosed by the lawmakers in the approved bill.
Both the Senate and the House of Representatives on Tuesday passed the 2019 Appropriation Bill and increased the estimate by 80 billion naira to 8.92 trillion naira.
President Muhammadu Buhari had on Dec. 19 presented a budget proposal of 8.83 trillion naira before the joint session of the National Assembly.
The chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Danjuma Goje gave reasons for the increment.
Presenting the committee’s report on Tuesday, Goje said such package gratuity and severance allowance) only comes up once in every four years.
“There is a slight increase in the budget deficit. This is as a result of the provision for severance benefits of the outgoing legislators and legislative aides, the induction/orientation and inauguration of new legislators, all of which occur once in four years, but were inadvertently not captured in the 2019 budget proposal.
“There was also the need to provide more fund for the security and intelligence agencies to deal with additional, emerging, unforeseen challenges in the country,” he said.