The lawmakers had earlier concluded plans to boo and heckle “no to tax bills…”, “withdraw tax bills” during the president’s 2025 budget presentation before a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives on Wednesday.
However, when the Presidency and the House leadership got wind of the lawmakers’ plan to heckle and boo the president, the House summoned an emergency closed-door meeting with all the members on Wednesday morning.
“Plans have been concluded to heckle ‘no to tax bills’ during President Tinubu’s budget presentation speech, but the lawmakers were quickly invited to a meeting with the House leadership at 9:30am on Wednesday,” said a source familiar with the detail of the proceedings of the meeting..
“During the meeting, they appealed to members to respect the sanctity of the hallowed chambers and the existing cordial relationship with the Executive, to shelve their plans to disrupt President Tinubu’s speech.
“They therefore announced that the president had graciously increased the constituency allowance to N1billion per member.”
Although the money will be padded in the 2025 budget in the name of constituency projects, legislative experts say it was a mere red-herring as the projects would be awarded to companies selected by the lawmakers.
DAILY NIGERIAN could not independently verify what the senators got, but sources said it would be in the region of 2 to 4 billion naira per senator.
In the 2024 budget, the lawmakers got from N200 million to N500 million, depending on the member’s closeness to the speaker of the House of Representatives, Abba Tajudeen or chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Abubakar Bichi.
In July, each senator of member of the House of Reps got N500m and N200m largesse respectively after approving the president’s request to jack up the 2024 Appropriation Act by ₦6.2tn.
The July perks, according to legislative insiders, were “padded” in the parastatals under the ministries of Agriculture and Water Resources.
