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National Assembly: CSOs request audit of N1.5 trillion received in nine years

Nass

Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have requested for an audit of N1.5 trillion received by the National Assembly (NASS) between 2005- 2014 as well as clarity on extra allowance paid to legislators beyond the approved amount by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC).

This is even as they challenged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and NASS to embrace electronic voting in order to guarantee transparency in the electoral process.

The programme manager of Enough is Enough (EiE) Nigeria, Mr Adeolu Adekola, stated this in Abuja yesterday in commemoration of its five years anniversary protest to NASS.

OpenNAAS is an advocacy campaign championed by civil society organisations, Enough is Enough (EiE) Nigeria and BudgIT that demands open, transparent and accountable National Assembly.

He noted that the use of electronic voting rather than voice voting in the National Assembly would enable Nigerians to track the performance of legislators, just as he requested for openness in the entire governance processes.

Adekola demanded for sustained advocacy driven by Nigerians on the need for a transparent and accountable National Assembly in view of multiple defections by politicians.

Also speaking, the project manager of BudgIT, Mr Tolulope Agunboye said that since NASS budget is a statutory transfer and not subject to the revenue performance of the country that they should publish details of their 2018 budget.

He wondered why NASS has failed to maintain a functional website, saying that the list of dead legislators are still found in the website.

According to him, “The website doesn’t also provide information on the activities of representatives elected to serve their constituents while parliamentary documents such as acts, bills, hansards, notice and order papers are neither up to date nor easily accessible”.

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