Cash crunch hits Reps

Speaker, House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal

Members of the House of Representatives appear to be low on cash owing to the non-payment of their quarterly allowances.

The lawmakers receive official allowance of between N27.9m and N30m each every quarter of the year.The figure is besides an official monthly salary of between N900,000 and N1.1m.

But, findings by The PUNCH on Tuesday showed that the third quarter allowance was not paid to the lawmakers before they proceeded on their annual holiday on July 17.

The third quarter allowance is to cover the months of July to September.

Investigations revealed that the most of the lawmakers resorted to grumbling and becoming restless after several visits to their banks in the days preceding the recess and last week, yielded no positive results.

A source confided in The PUNCH that the trips to the banks started after the expected credit alerts failed to hit their mobile telephone sets.

“This is not funny anymore; how long is this going to last? We are on a long holiday”, one member complained when contacted by our correspondent.

It was gathered that the anxiety among the lawmakers was heightened by the electioneering projects said to have piled up for them at their   constituencies ahead of the 2015 elections.

A National Assembly source told The PUNCH in Abuja that “those of them nursing the ambition of returning in 2015 are most worried because the delayed payment is causing setbacks for them.”

The PUNCH gathered that the lawmakers initially blamed the crunch on the bureaucracy of the National Assembly until they learnt that it was caused by the non-release of third quarter allocations by the Ministry of Finance.

The ministry had released first and second quarters allocations to ministries, departments and agencies.

No MDAs has received the third quarter allocation.

A senior National Assembly management source, who confirmed that the lawmakers had not been paid, explained that the situation was not caused by “in-house disagreement at the assembly.”

The source said, “Third quarter allocations have not been released to us; they know that there is no way there can be money in their accounts without the allocations being released to us.

“The money usually comes after the FAAC meeting, which holds towards the end of the month. Somehow, their holiday started before the FAAC meeting and no money has been released.

“Everything will be sorted out after the general allocation is released. It is just a little delay; nothing more.”

When contacted for comments, the Deputy House Majority Leader, Mr. Leo Ogor, denied that members grumbled over the matter.

Although he confirmed that no member had been paid yet, he said it was “inappropriate” for anybody to give the impression that lawmakers were grumbling over the delayed payment.

“There is no iota of truth in the impression created that anybody has been grumbling. The issue has also not come up at any of the executive sessions; it is a pure lie. Quote me any day”, Ogor added