 Now according to a recent report, the national assembly approved 819.5 billion for the 2023 supplementary budget with significant allocations for different sectors. Now the budget set aside 500 billion as the provision for fuel subsidy removal to Nigerians and the ministry of works and housing is supposed to be allocated 185.2 billion and the ministry of agriculture will receive 19.2 billion and the national judiciary council is allocated about 35 billion naira all the federal capital territory project will receive 10 billion naira and the new national assembly members about I think they are about 330 right 303 of them will share 70 billion naira lack of consideration for the civil servants raises concerns about fairness now conversely farmers who suffered the devastating 2022 floods across the country will be getting 19 billion naira so what are your thoughts on this 70 billion naira budgetary allocation for lawmakers now please let's hear what you have to say remember you can join the conversation send us an ezimus or what that is very one eight zero three four six six three you can also tweet it as that way to africa one with the hashtag where she'll do that i have nothing to say nothing i'm okay so let me bring a ukulele because i don't have anything to say he's an entrepreneur idea generator terex speaker and a patriot he has a keen eye for opportunities based on his expertise in politics working with non-governmental organizations and the federal government he is passionate about nigeria and is what we'll call a detribalized nigerian he considers his boundaries to be limitless and is really focused on changing the nigerian narrative in political participation and currently serves as the executive director after the electoral college nigeria and is also the country lead for we chat or watch at rather um nigeria kone law was uh a once acting national publicity secretary of koa party alliance with new nigeria secretarial candidate in 2019 and has since transitioned to non-partisan influential player in politics and electoral matters in nigeria and we're always honored to have him with us he's a friend of the house thank you so much kale for joining us this evening it's always a pleasure and it's great to be here and you know the topic is going very quickly i'm telling you that i say i don't have anything to say kule 70 billion nair no you know when you're looking at this you have to start from the top 10 billion is being given to abuja for he did the issues abuja has abuja some issues with drainage um treadmill estate was quite a problem street lights are not working so that's a that's a major problem isn't that problem across all state no it is but abuja is always giving preferential is the federal capital so and then you know to resuscitate um farmlands i think 19 billion is being given uh the please note the ratio these farmlands are across nigeria by also kogi um legos major flash points yeah and then you're only given about 19.5 billion now it gets interesting the reasons why money was given to these other subventions was listed now this is a confusing part 35 billion given to the judicial council for what the new building judicial council are the ones sitting on the presidential electoral case i didn't say that i didn't say that i'm not confirm literally when i saw this i said you guys just really like to give me a headache in this country but this is this now gets impressive so to to for 303 members of national assembly to settle down 70 billion is being approved to settle down what work did they do please can i say the figure please i need to i need to be clear one i need to see this okay so that people will know to each person 231 million and 23 thousand is annoying so this gets complex remember that this new members and you know nigerians always want to agitate oh it can't be labor party it can't be pdp it can't be an mpp all of them are present they are the new members especially the new members i even made more of help the new parties than they are the older ones so and they of course they agree to they are going to agree to this so the executive wants to take um 500 billion which it wants to give though it's cancelled is 8k i think it has the news it has become news now it's cancelled is 8k i think the opera against giving a thousand to families was quite an issue so i think government has cancelled that based on people really complaining as in it didn't make sense as a palliative measure to give people a thousand naira to do what and um that has been thrown on that the boss but they have 500 billion so the executive the best way to look at it is maybe a a less shared the cake ratio so the executive wants to hold 500 billion to do that he must pet the national assembly 70 billion and he was ensured that you can go to court to fight this matter hence giving the judicial commission 35 billion the three arms of government are happy the citizens lose i'm sorry but so so we come back to we are we don't like oppression unless we're the ones are pressing people because that's what it means i mean considering what you just said that all the parties all the new parties that were all saying oh give everybody a chance let's let's explore something new i mean they're all nobody's going to say no to this money well if you look at it the people that they are settled the people that this money is taken off to settle which are the new members are more of abga uh they're about eight parties in the national assembly so that's abga stp adc um labor party um nmpp those are the new boys in town so they are mostly they are new came in with apc and pdp but not that much the new parameters are actually new party what exactly are all this money meant to do well um let's let's start from the beginning um sometime in i think 2009 no proceeding let's start from the beginning so initially the national assembly used to be an open door i remember i was serving being abuja in 2002 2003 you could walk into the senate president's office i remember chuba okadibu at the time i remember his office smell of cigarette smoke so much i that's to tell you was an open door you can't go to the national assembly right now it's not that easy and they built sometime in 2010 that was when they added their monuments so the basic salary like what we're arguing and you know everybody's talking about the ramfuck increase of salaries the truth is that a senator or house of rep salary is about 400 and something close to 500 in the area of 500 so let's just beg at 500 000 and they've not reviewed it since 2010 it's okay for them to review their problem has never been their salary during covid i remember a lot of national assembly members came out and said they were not taking their salaries and nigeria was happy and nigerians were happy and i was laughing i was like oh god you guys don't even get it it's not their salaries by the time you put in their monuments and the you're talking of newspaper allowance that's two million we're talking of wardrobe allowances that is in the border of seven million by the time you finish your tick on park it is close to 36 million what is the salary of 500 k going to alter so we allowed this in 2010 i don't know whether of course i think it's because of nigeria's basic political literacy and since then the national assembly in kahoot with the executive has always called his own his own this thing if you look at the national budget the national assembly takes about a hundred and something billion as his own personal funds yes they will say they need to pay staff working for them or that's the excuse he is and a few other things but if you look at the staff working in national assembly how many are they really and then you put juxtapose that across the amount spent on 469 nigerians that is 360 from the house of rep and 109 from the senate which is the high house and you look at these ungodly amounts being put together based on their their salaries put together it's it's it's highly shocking and you know what they've developed this thing to quite a a system that only the national assembly can affect their monuments or the alliances of the national assembly so how can you so it's just like now uva decides to employ me to work with ways and then she gives me the liberty to choose my own salary come on it's going to be party now you got it so i i i'm trying to wrap my head around a country that has complained so bitterly that we are in debt we've seen how a lot of things you know that would have brought some level of relief or circle for the average nigerian been taking been yanked off i mean the electricity people are still knocking around the corner right every single thing that has to do with you know giving or some level of breather you know to be able to leave you know and just breathe it's been yanked off right and now you put an allocation you know what really baffles me is the lopsidedness of the thinking farmers were complaining about i mean very soon they will talk about what's it called food shortage yeah i mean if you check around the sgd goals a lot of things is is circled around that food security you know because it is lurking this food insecurity is lurking around the corner and now there are farmers that are genuinely in problem right now because what some of their farmlands you know were swept away by lord and you allocate something to them that i don't even see how far that can go right is the same structure when it comes to health care the same structure when it comes to education you see that repeatedly right those allocations continue to um what's it called dwindle dwindle downwards while the allocation that has to do with you know enriching someone or giving people extra whatever keeps going up so why do we have this problem and why are we Nigerians you know sitting down and watching this happen what can we do about it first first and foremost Nigerians are not concerned with how governance runs i'd explain something on the same ballot paper in this i'm just giving an example in 2019 the statistics the statistics are far worse in 2023 but in 2019 on the same day voting for president you have let's say 20 27 million people participating just to send it which is in the same polling unit the same day the same everything let's a drop to if you take everybody participating in Nigeria there's a drop to almost 16 million by the time you get to house of assembly average lead us to about 9 10 million Nigerians meaning we don't care if you notice the conversations around politics all you hear is a bit of a article nobody even cares and then i've been in situations where i've had and in a chosen here i've had to you know discuss with people and you know people thought it was a sin to vote a different party maybe at presidential and vote another party for for senate then another they thought your ballot to be cancelled because they didn't know that that's bad so we've not really cared about the other levels of governance we do not demand anything from them in short we absorb them in from governance let's be honest i i've been in churches have been in mosques have been in different places where they're discussing governance and house of rep and senate senators are sitting down there and they're totally absorbed from the problem and some of them even come and give testimony explain that Nigeria is bad we had it this is a country where we had a senator who was teaching us so much common sense and proposed only three bills and feel that even sponsored three bills and couldn't consolidate one bill to become law ben marie bruce but yet he was making common sense common sense to who we don't pay to make common sense to us go to the house agabic common sense to them but we exalted him we rated him better than uh dino who we thought was a catastrophe but i'll be honest in the eighth assembly dino was the most successful senator 10 bills passed higher than anybody in the senate until today probably still the highest uh the senator has passed the highest bills it's shocking based on the is but it tells you a lot and we don't care about that if you put juxtapose 20 Nigerians trade Nigerians put them in the room and give them an exam and say senator ben marie bruce and senator dino melio was a better senator many people are going to take senator ben marie bruce but that's we like we like the packaging yeah that's what gets us we're africans so we cannot and then we don't even care about budgeting a lot of people you know budget does a lot of work around here budget stays you know this amount going to national assembly is absurd it's preposterous most of us don't care we don't even look at Nigerian budget the national assembly has been pickpocketing from the coffers of Nigeria since deception why do you think they are robust stamp you think if they were if they were as hungry as the british parliament the president of them to go sit down they won't so it's highly shocking and you know we want a system where there's separation of powers and all the executive has done is kidnapped the other two two arms of government and they know how to do it so which raised the question so everybody's talking about the 70 billion going to national assembly nobody's looking at the 75 billion that's going to the judicial commission with no tag all right thanks for staying with us as you already know we're discussing the 70 billion budgetary allocation for lawmakers and we're adding the 35 billion to the judiciary we're going to add that now yes we have to discuss that and we have with us come in our please let's hear what you have say remember you can join the conversation send us an sms or what's up to the rate one eight eight four six six three can also treat us at ratio after one with a hashtag ratio clearly you raised something very very strong but let me come to Jola because if we continue like this Namiya you could talk let me come to you Jola go ahead okay so I personally I want to understand at this point now I know that you are you are a very big advocate on you know Nigerians getting you know literacy you know when it comes to politics and all that is there anything that can be done or we're just to assume that well that 70 or 35 billion is just gone like that there's nothing we can do as office of the city names because I mean on the other hand these guys are there to I mean there are our representatives they are there at our behest you understand it's not like oh they just went there I mean I can say that so this person representing my constituents I don't understand this money you want to collect come and explain do we have any any room to even put our our how would I say to influence this let me put it like that or we we should just sit back and let me first start with this they don't represent you because I don't know what they've done that represents you well first what you think I'm supposed to come to you which is constituency products it's not constitutional there's no basis in the Nigerian constitution for it so is the fraud already by national assembly first thing in which country do you see legislators having executive functions now the most shocking part is that they don't even live near you this is the only country where people that serve in legislative position live in the capital in other countries us sweden they go to the capital meet and they give them train tickets and they're out of it back to their constituencies but here they live in Nigeria it's simply shocking of which are not the federal government provides houses for them so how do we represent their people constituency or constituency houses and houses and constituencies which they're supposed to meet with their people there nobody's there is grass grass is meeting people so I don't see how they represent you now going down to you holding them accountable for you to hold them accountable you first need to know what their offices need to do now this is where Nigerians have a problem now right now if you ask in Nigerian uh who is uh what's the name of that actor that side chick whatever his name is um so if they ask him what's the side chick's name sorry I don't know such things that's why I know things about him so um if you ask that question anywhere they have a Nigerian who give you g's to tell you her name they can even tell you what street she's living on but when it comes to things that affect themselves expect Nigerians directly they don't have a clue and it's so bad that um if you if you discuss with maybe someone sitting down in national assembly and he said I picked my constituents calls the job is not to pick their calls the job is to represent them two different things picking their calls why you listen to them you pay school fees this is not to say that the electorate two does not have his own issues I look at us as we tolerate the corruption or like now you know you're attending a buffet and then the the constituents project is everybody's waiting for their turn for it to come back and that's how we've always looked at it and for me that's that's the biggest problem you would on social media and I this happens a lot on social media you see people saying okay you know what the other I don't like this person this guy's not representing he's not he's not doing his work all of you write all your intelligent jargon on diet now here's the catch the next day the person maybe goes for an oambe and then sees the same senator then takes a picture the same people on your social media will start writing on that ah you've made it diola you've made it you know I don't get it so so the truth is we are not ready for good governance because we don't even understand the parameters of good governance okay so I want us to be visited the 35 billion that is allocated to the judiciary right I mean what do you like us is quite pertinent right right now at least here they don't tell us waiting 19 billion they go for they've told us what 70 billion is supposed to have new people settled in even though we don't agree with it at least but at least at least it has a tag 35 billion to the judiciary has no tag and we know currently that there's a huge case for the 2023 elections you know that the judiciary are supposed to be the ones that are unbiased that are supposed to be the ones handling that case so you've just handed over to them 35 billionaire what do you expect those kind of judgments to do those kind of judges to do let me first tell you something what I'm rewatching him off I want to complete it in my house this this this angle you are going to you don't want me to comment on it but generally the truth is that the executive probably made an anomaly there it it leaves a lot no I I I cannot I don't want to I beg to disagree that that it is it is blind the blind they don't even try to make it maybe they just forgot no no no no don't make it look like that because who already did the I already did the big job I already told you that all the rest were tagged and I told you that I was not yes now so I've done the big job I don't I don't think I need to do that you have to decide for that you have to decide for that because you see obviously when they talk it's like for me I sometimes my heart breaks honestly because I don't see any change happening in this country anytime soon because as long as somebody understands the language that Nigerians continue or they want to continue to hear and just continue to play their language nobody will say you know what I've had it it is time for this country to actually take a turn because this is what is happening because you cannot tell me as far as I am concerned it looks like bribery to me what exactly is the judiciary doing with 35 billion Naira what have they said that they needed you understand you know if you were given to the entire judiciary it sounds a different message it is the judicial council the judges I didn't say anything you are not making the matter worse you are making the matter worse Kule like I'm really scared you were not reaching there was the judicial council that city of it is just and again you know like you rightly said they are getting away with it because we don't bother so how do we end this because literally right Kule I'm tired of palliatives I'm tired of all these things that they come up with but the palliatives have even been cancelled now no but the 500 million billion dollars is still hanging somewhere sorry it's still hanging somewhere dollars don't enter my mouth too much in that 500 billion is still hanging somewhere they will still give it a name so what exactly can we do to stop all of these things if we want to suffer let us suffer and know that yes not that we we are trying to say okay you know let us adjust to our reality and somebody is using back the back here to come and do something again criminal I'll give an example so two days ago when three days ago when this came out the first thing that came out was they were giving a thousand to the uproar against that eight thousand you won't just a cost to change so if Nigerians decide to take governance important of course these things will be dealt with you cannot deal with things and expect no reaction it's what we've decided to take as nothing that's what has been allowed to pass on at the table so for me I'm surprised nobody Nigerian everybody is just discussing 70 billion national assembly I live the national assembly judicial council at this point in governance in Nigeria what is the court case what are you doing and you're even supposed to be the the the the law of justice today is international criminal justice day only what can we do to tie this 35 billionaire to the international criminal because I don't understand let them tell us what exactly that when it's for yeah I'll explain now if you really wanted to take the case to the international criminal court you need to first understand something you elected these guys the judicial council no you elected the national assembly and the executive so they are going to is it me that elected them when I mean we I don't mean you I mean Nigerians is it Nigerians that elected them yes are you sure why do we have a case in court now why do we have a case in court you know there's something critical about court cases still proved in court I know that status quo status quo remains so even if you are going to say you're going to dispute that of the president for example you cannot dispute that of 469 national assembly members what's the way forward because remember that the executive cannot approve this money without the national assembly now definitely they did not so it's okay for the executive to dream didn't donald trump want to build a wall now superlosi ensure that that money did not come was he not talking about what is he talking about what it is but as long as the national assembly starts now the president can't do anything so the real culprit in this game don't even look at the president is the work of the executive to say gimme gimme gimme is the work of national assembly to say I'm not giving you solution what can we do one Nigerians need to understand the way governance works two we need to start paying attention to a lot of things three there's the problems are not apc pdp labor party the problems are those in power and they are inaccessibility to the pains and problems of those who they are covering that's the major problem we need to understand that if we diverse ourselves from that we're gonna have a very major problem because our simple understanding of most things is because you're not apc that's why i don't like it because you're not pdp that's why i don't like it because you're not labor party that's why you don't agree with it so we need to first get out of all that quagmire then we need to have people that have pay attention to understand before i got on the street i was on a i was on a twitter space with a former local government chairman and you know they were explaining that by the time you pay salaries in the local government he had forgotten that he had mentioned the number of staff in public local government up to 55 nurses there are 100 doctors this is a more duffin 100 doctors mentioned and that give or take you don't have account for 1000 staff so he was explaining that the faca location which is close to about 400 405 million actually for a more duffin for federal but by the time you divide it into the lcds that created it's 200 200 million so 200 million paying people and you don't pay anybody more than 100k times 1000 how much is that but you're justifying that by paying those salaries 200 million is gone so that therein lies our problem and you know when he places that his party members will tell you ah he's correct he's doing it right this is that that nobody wants to look at it and this is thing if you own the company and you had so are we allowed to ask them to open the books to us and would they give us those books to see there's the f i f y bill which is effective in Nigeria unless you remember that Nigerian constitution supersedes state constitution because if i remember legal state assembly has not passed that act but as long as legal remains a part of Nigeria i must respond and if it doesn't respond and it's your local government local government chairman do not have immunity so you can take them to court and if they they they cannot prove it in court they will go to jail yes this is ready to catch a lot of them sorry i'm not that flooding that i saw at a gig is something that is persistent constantly happening right and this is just one problem out of the plethora of problems that we have in Nigeria but you need to understand that drainages are bested in the power of the local government i know i'm going somewhere with the conversation right if truly that the government is seeking 800 and whatever billion nair 800 million dollars 800 billion you understand no no no no you know the total amount you know 500 billion is set aside for their other so everything in total is about 800 something billion nair do you understand if they are seeking that kind of fund what would be a genuine um what's it called disbursement of that fund that would make sense to Nigerians to say okay you know what these people are truly working towards us you know getting better as a nation okay so if your issues are first well okay what problems do you what what do you want to use for uh the road usage and then at home funny um i was i was talking to somebody the day before yesterday and i was giving average statistics of the amount of light a house uses about 149 kilowatts per house that cannot power a fridge so um if you have 500 million to spend if you i did i was on the conversation and i i think i put it out and i said it will make more sense to alleviate to provide palliates this way and um i said carry 500 million 500 billion a 2.5 kva system probably cost you about 1 million you put it across 500 000 homes in Nigeria the amount of well people buy wood it will drop drastically and somebody came on that comment and said but the homeless haven't eaten and i said there is no country in the world that gives money to the poorest of the poorest what happens for the country to develop is that you put the middle class at a place where they are not on that pressure once they are not on that pressure they will employ more nannies employ more drivers employ more this that's how the poorest gets the gain from it so the more you balance the middle class the better it is for the poorest giving money to the poorest has never worked anywhere in the world and that's the conversation if they were thinking that those are palliatives using renewable energy providing these systems have 10 15 year guarantees you've cleared you've cleared that meaning at home they have light i'll buy fuel from car to go to work and come back i would be rushing to come back home because there's light at home and you would have solved the major problem because now businesses can you know there's a lot that's what i'm saying so for me i think a genuine approach to some of these budgets or whatever it is that you hear would be that okay the government is truly solving like you rightly said identify the problems and then just you know what try to find a way to fix the problem i was happy when they said that they were taking up all the bureaucracy around the power sector and they were opening it up for more investors to come in meaning that you know somebody can decide to say i'm going to power the entire victoria island and all of those things right but remember in all this as much as we look at the federal government the most culpable for me as state government now you've been giving powers of mini-grid it's state like adama can power the entire nigeria from renewable energy same with soko too same with the multiple states what happened to the legal solar power project which is totally non-existent right now what's what's what's what's going on and state governors points to the federal so if adama can power the whole of nigeria first of all is adama currently fully you know 24 hour power and are they able to to to prove that they can do that and how do we get integrated yeah okay so if you go to northern nigeria the amount of land that is left to bear is massive now what shocks me is states like adama, zamfara and ko haven't thought that they could sell renewable energy to other states this is the new igr is bigger than having kudora it's bigger than having but because we have state governors that you know just interested wait wait for carpet yeah good evening ladies i said it before that nigerian nigeria governors is a scam we need the traditional gods to swear them into power if anyone violates the terms and conditions of governors and promises to citizens the gods we deal with them sharp sharp ah how they come down how they is in the uk thank you adi is that you have a comment yeah so this is um good evening my dear beautiful sisters of what are you saying hashtag raise 70 billion budgetary allocation for lawmakers i have no problem in allocating a budget for lawmakers and i'm not against it but don't you think it is on the high side our main problem in nigeria is misplaced parity according to sister ua you find out that when funds are allocated the rich gets richer and there are problems that need funds to be fixed and we do not do that it is very sad and unfortunate for crying out loud what is the judiciary doing with 35 billion budgetary allocation i really don't understand this don't you think this is ridiculous you ladies are looking getting beautiful tonight and it is daniel illa weighs regularly thank you daniel so i weep for nigeria her future looks bleak please what is the way forward this is from mrs adini g from adjah wait for one minute i like what you said focus on building the middle class right if you take a lot of us and and give us tools to be able to continue to uh what's it called um generate income we can take a lot more people out of poverty and employ them i love that i just hope they are listening um so the one minute okay so the problem with nigeria is that i don't think nigeria has ever elected nigerians to run to be in office and by nigerian i mean they are nigerians yes by birth and stuff but they're not nigerians at heart so what happens is that you've elected an epic house and whatever and they're trying there's this competition within the system but there's one key thing politicians always come together so regardless of party they are so allowing that 70 billion together and that is what nigerians need to understand thank you very much thank you very much on that note thank you deola thank you so much again k l before we go and show you follow us across all our social media handles that way so africa can interact with us further drop a comment and more importantly follow all our engagements on social media like share and invite your families and friends to watch and follow the conversation you missed our course for today here is again out of sheer insensitivity coupled with impunity the members of the national assembly regardless of political affiliation conspired to bridge a relevant provision of the constitution of the federal republic of nigeria 1999 by padding the supplementary appropriation bill 2023 to provide a so-called palliative of 70 billion for 306 newly elected members of the national assembly and this was from the senior human rights activist and senior advocate of nigeria feme phala exactly what kuhnle said at that point they are no longer apc pdp labor party abga they are all politicians we'll see you guys tomorrow at 8 p.m. we'll bring another great conversation to your screen