Ebun Francis || The Senate has formally confirmed that its members receive N13.5 million monthly as running cost.
In a statement on Sunday, Senate spokesman, Aliyu Abdullahi, said the revelation by Senator Sani that senators receive N13.5 million monthly as “running cost” is nothing new.
According to Abdullahi, what Senator Sani said were already “contained in various line items and expenditure heads of the budget of the National Assembly which has been made public.”
He noted that “if people had looked critically at the budget of the National Assembly which has since been made public, they would have seen that various line items like traveling, medicals, consultancy and the rest were captured in the budget and they were the funds divided for each Senator’s use.”
“Almost all holders of elective and appointive offices have running costs allocated to their offices and that cannot be said to be part of their salaries,” he added.
Abdullahi also denied media reports that Senators were unhappy with the revelation made by the Senator representing Kaduna Central.
Shehu Sani had last week confirmed that Each Senator receives N13.5m running cost every month, a disclosure that has drawn widespread condemnation from Nigerians.
The money is separate from the salaries and allowances approved by the Revenue Allocation and Fiscal (RMAFC) which, Mr. Sani says, totals about N750,000 monthly.