Kaduna State Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai yesterday dared House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara by making his salary, allowances and security votes public.
He insisted that the National Assembly budget lacked transparency.
El-Rufai, according to his pay slip obtained in Kaduna yesterday, receives a monthly salary of N470,521.74.
Dogara last Friday threw a challenge to El-Rufai’s request to the National Assembly to provide further details on the N115 billion 2016 National Assembly budget.
The governor, in a statement by his media aide, Samuel Aruwan, said the 2016 National Assembly budget for its 469 members was larger than the capital budget of Kaduna State, with close to 10 million inhabitants.
El-Rufai said his security votes for this year, which he broke down into procurement & installation of CCTV cameras for monitoring and surveillance, procurement of geo-position interceptor and location of GSM UMTS system to check the trends and intercept/locate kidnappers’ GSM calls and procurement of drones/Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) is N4.556 billion.
He said: “Our attention has been drawn to a challenge by the House of Representatives Speaker, calling on Kaduna State to make public its security votes and local government expenditure.
“Malam Nasir El-Rufai welcomes this challenge as a necessary step to improve and strengthen our democracy and would like to respond as follows:
“The budgets of all state governments in Nigeria are detailed out and presented at least under the headings of: personnel cost, overhead and capital expenditure.
“This is unlike the budget of the National Assembly, which is a single line item of over N100 billion that divulges zero information or details.
“NASS can at least break down its own single line budget into the hundreds of line items that are detailed in every state government budget in Nigeria. It is disingenuous to respond to every request for transparency by casting aspersions.
“On our part, the Kaduna State Government has consistently made public all its budget details. In 2016
, in an unprecedented step, the state published not only its own budget, but also that of all the 23 local government councils online on the www.openkaduna. com.ng website…
“El-Rufai is today making publicly available his pay-slip as Governor of Kaduna State. In February 2017, the Kaduna State Government paid the governor a net salary of N470,521.74, with the following details: Income Basic Salary: N185,308.75, Hardship Allowance: N370,617.50, Gross Pay: N555,926.25, PAYE: N85,404.5, Total Deduction: N85,401.51, Net Pay: N470,521.74.
“The amount may appear puny, but it reflects what the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission approved as the salary and allowances of every state governor adjusted to reflect provision in-kind of accommodation and transportation.
“El-Rufai would like to reiterate his call for the National Assembly leadership to do the same and disclose the details of the National Assembly budget and the salaries and allowances of its leadership.” Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
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Excellent step to improve transparency.
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