SERAP goes to Court to stop Akpabio, Abbas from increasing own budget

By Christiana Ekpa

Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), said it has filed a lawsuit at the Federal High Court against the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas “for unilaterally and arbitrarily increasing the allocation for lawmakers from N197bn to N344bn, their highest since the return of democracy in 1999.”
The organization said it jointly filed the suit at the court with 20 concerned Nigerians.
This was disclosed in a statement issued by SERAP’s Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare.
According to SERAP, they are asking the court to determine “whether the lawmakers, in the exercise of their powers over appropriation/money bills, can unilaterally increase their own budget without the re-presentation of the budget by the Executive.”
The development followed a report that lawmakers had last month raised their allocation from N197bn proposed by President Bola Tinubu in the budget to N344bn.
SERAP claimed that the lawmakers will in total draw N514bn from the 2024 budget, saying the lawmakers had 2023 arbitrarily increased their own budget from the originally proposed N169bn to N228bn.
The organization wants the court to declare that the action of the National Assembly in increasing its own budget is a breach of the democratic principles of separation of powers and checks and balances.
SERAP further wants the court to issue an order of perpetual injunction restraining and preventing the National Assembly from unilaterally increasing its budget without the re-presentation of such by the President in line with the Nigerian Constitution.