The National Assembly has explained the delay in payment of Severance Allowance to legislative aides of the 9th National Assembly.

This comes as over findings by The Guardian revealed that about 70 per cent of legislative aides who served from 2019 to 2023 are yet to be paid their severance allowance.

The aides, who bemoaned the untold hardship the non-payment of the allowance has caused on them, groaned that they celebrated the last Christmas without fulfilling their responsibilities to their partners, parents, children, pay house rents and humongous debts already incurred.

Some of the affected aides who spoke to The Guardian on condition of anonymity revealed that only two batches of 900 aides each have been paid so far by the management.

The former aides, who concealed their identities for fear that their severance would be withheld, appealed to the National Assembly Management to hasten the process of paying them, adding that they have been waiting for this since June 2023, after their tenure expired.

“Out of the six batches, only two have been paid so far. And to make matters worse, they are paying one batch per week. This is unfair to us who served the country for four years. And paying us this way leaves a lot to be desired,” one of the aides said.

But speaking with The Guardian yesterday, Clerk to the National Assembly Sani Tambuwal explained that management was working round the clock to get all aides paid.

According to him, over 2,000 of the more than 5,000 aides have received their severance, assuring that more will get theirs today.

Speaking through his media aide, Umar Shehu, Tambuwal disclosed that some staff from the Account Department worked on Christmas and Boxing Day to hasten the process.

“Credit should go to management. I said so because so far, management has been able to pay over 2,000 aides. The third batch is coming on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Each batch contains over 1,000 staff. The third batch that is coming is more than 1,000 aides, he said.

He however, failed to give the precise number of batches to be paid.

He also blamed some lawmakers who changed legislative more than five times in the four year tenure. This he said, makes the task of sorting those qualified for the allowance much difficult.

He said: “For a staff of a legislator to benefit from Severance package, he ought to have served a minimum of two years. So if a member will change his aides five times before the expiration, we have to scrutinize to know those that are qualified.

“Again, the funds are coming in batches monthly, not in bulk. The federal government is releasing the money monthly. Even the December allocation for the balance of the Severance may be coming between Wednesday and Friday. These delays are not deliberate.”

On whether all former aides would receive their severance before the year runs out, he said: “We are hoping for that. But you have to understand that the staff that are working are human beings. We have more than 5,000 aides to be scrutinized and each file has to be checked one by one. You can’t pay somebody that is not qualified and fail to pay a qualified person.

“Throughout the Christmas holiday, our staff were working to scrutinise the remaining files. And Management needs to be appreciated.”