BUSINESS DAY
Angst, outrage are the order of the day in Nigeria today as citizens bemoan the humongous budgetary allocation to the National Assembly as recently passed by the bicameral legislature and assented to by President Ahmed Bola Tinubu.
The mood in the nation over this rape on the citizens’ commonwealth is not unexpected in a country where hunger, diseases and out-of-children population are all on the increase due to poverty that has become a native in most homes and the country at large.
Out of the N28.7 trillion budget which is supposed to serve the needs of country’s over 200 million population, the National Assembly which harbours just 409 members, comprising 109 senators and 360 House of Representatives members, has cornered N197 billion for itself.
This is the case in a budget that has allocated only N1.3 trillion to the entire health sector at a time when diseases are sending many citizens to their early grave because hospitals have no drugs and many doctors have abandoned the hospitals because of inadequate funding by the government.
This paltry allocation, representing less than 5 percent of the total budget, failed to meet the 15 percent yearly budget allocation to the health sector agreed by member states of the African Union (AU) at their April 2001 meeting in Abuja, which was also adopted by the World Health Organisation (WHO)…
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