BY JOHNBOSCO AGBAKWURU, JOSEPH ERUNKE & LEVINUS - TopicsExpress

BY JOHNBOSCO AGBAKWURU, JOSEPH ERUNKE & LEVINUS NWABUGHIOGU ABUJA—THE Senate said, Tuesday, it would soon release to the public accurate figure of its expenditure, saying it has nothing to hide. This came on a day the House of Representatives spokesman, Zakari Mohammed, refuted claims that lawmakers in the National Assembly were the highest paid lawmakers in the world. Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Ahmad Maccido,PDP, Sokoto North, said hewould go through the records and come up with authentic figure of amounts released and expended so far. Maccido,who responded through a short text message to Vanguard, in Abuja, on the latter’s question seeking his reaction to Monday’s statement by former Minister of Education, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili that Nigeria had so far spent more than N1 trillion on the maintenance of National Assembly in the past eight years, said the Senate was not prepared to join issues with her. He said the upper legislative chamber had nothing to hide, saying it had been transparent in the course of its functions. Maccido also insisted that appropriate figure on money released to the Senate would in no time be made available. He said: “It needs some time to go through records and come up with accurate figure and at the moment I am not in Abuja.” The former Minister of Education had stirred the hornet’s nest with her allegation that a whopping N1 trillionhad not only been spent on the maintenance of members of the National Assembly but also N9.08 billion on maintenance of presidential fleet. Mrs Ezekwesili, who is the immediate past Vice-President of theWorld Bank (Africa), had equally decried the budgetary allocation system in the country, which gave more to recurrent expenditure than capital projects.