N’Assembly to pass 2024 budget Saturday, rationalises delayed severance to legislative aides

The Senate, will on Saturday, hold a plenary to pass the 2024 Appropriation Bill. During his submission of a N27.5 trillion proposal to the joint session of the National Assembly in November, President Bola Tinubu had urged the lawmakers to ensure its approval before the end of the year.  

MEANWHILE, the legislature has explained the delay in payment of severance allowance to legislative aides of Ninth National Assembly. This comes as findings revealed that about 70 per cent of them, who served from 2019 to 2023, are yet to be paid their dues.  
   
The aides, who bemoaned the untold hardship the non-payment had caused them, stated that they celebrated Christmas without fulfilling their responsibilities to partners, parents, children, landlords, among others. Some of the affected, who spoke to The Guardian on condition of anonymity, noted that only two batches of 9,00 aides had been paid so far.
  
The former assistants appealed to the National Assembly management to hasten the process of paying them, adding that they have been waiting for this since June. 
 
“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. 

According to him, over 2,000 of the more than 5,000 aides have received their severance, assuring that more would get theirs from today. 
IN a chat via his media aide, Umar Shehu, Tambuwal said 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. 
 
The clerk also blamed some lawmakers, who changed legislative aides more than five times in a four-year tenure. This he said, made the task of sorting those qualified for allowance much difficult. 
  
Tambuwal added: “For a staff of a legislator to benefit from a 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 scrutinise 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 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, the clerk stated: “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 fails to pay a qualified person. Throughout the Christmas holiday, our staff were working to scrutinise the remaining files. And management needs to be appreciated.”