The House of Representatives is to spend about N55bn next year on “miscellaneous” items, office furniture and local/international travels.

The House of Representatives is to spend about N55bn next year on “miscellaneous” items, office furniture and local/international travels.

Details of the 2010 budget also show that the House will incur more costs on various recurrent sub-heads in the coming year above the amount spent on the same purposes in 2009.

International and local travels by members of the House will consume N22bn (N18bn for local travels and N4bn for international travels) in 2010 as against the N19.8bn voted for the sub-head in 2009.

About N13.5bn was voted for miscellaneous expenses, out of which N4.2bn was set aside for public hearings to be conducted by standing committees of the House.

There are over 80 committees in the House, but in 2009, many of them did not conduct any hearings. However, N3.6bn was voted for public hearings in 2009.

Besides, a separate N15.8bn was set aside as “sitting allowances” for the 360 members of the House.

Sittings during public hearings are counted as normal sittings of committees. It was not clear why a separate vote of N4.2bn was provided for public hearings.

Further details show that the “maintenance of office furniture” will cost N287.5m in 2010 as against N250m in 2009.

Investigations by our correspondent on Monday, however, indicated that some office furniture purchased for the House this year, including chairs, were yet to be installed.

Many chairs purchased for committee rooms are still piled up in the rooms owing to lack of space to mount them.

Similarly, N460m was set aide for House committees to hire the services of consultants in 2010, up from the N400m voted for the sub-head in 2009.

Each committee was allocated N5m to hire consultants, though not all committees of the House carry out visible oversight duties.

Another whopping N3.7bn was allocated to “materials and supplies,” out of which N952.7m is for the purchase of “computer materials” and supplies and another N355.1m for “library books and periodicals.”

This year, N308.8m was voted for books and periodicals, besides the N200m earmarked for “purchase of books for National Assembly library.”

Checks at the library, however, revealed that the library had neither been expanded nor had new books worth N200m been purchased by officials.

The “maintenance of computers and other information technology equipment” at the House cost N360m in 2009. Next year, N952.7m will be spent to procure new ones.

The total budget of the House for 2010 is N58.1bn