N10B House Loan Scandal: The Representatives That Benefitted
ABUJA, June 05, (THEWILL) - Detained Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Dimeji Bankole has denied benefiting from the controversial N10 billion loan obtained by the House to cater for the increment in the quarterly allowances of members.
A statement by Idowu Bakare, Media aide to Bankole made available to THEWILL today said "contrary to media reports that the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Dimeji Bankole and hisDeputy Alhaji Usman Bayero Nafada benefited from the increases in allowances that necessitated the taking of a N10billion loan, the former speaker and his deputy never benefitted from the loan as they received only the old rate they have been receiving before the issue of increment was recommended by a 37 member Committee and endorsed by an Executive session of the House.
"Before the increment quarterly allowance to the office of the Speaker was N100million while his deputy received N80 million."
According to Bakare, the loan in question was distributed among other principal officers and the remaining members of the House as shown in the table below.
Position Old Rate New Rate Rate of Increment
Speaker N100m N100m Nil
D.Speaker N80m N80m Nil
House Leader N46m N60m N14m
D. House Leader N43m N57m N14m
Chief Whip N41m N55m N14m
D. Chief Whip N40.5m N54m N14m
Minority Whip N36m N50m N14m
Others principal officer’s increment shows that the Minority Whip, Deputy Minority Leader and Deputy Minority Whip that have been receiving N36million per quarter received an increment of N14 million to make up N50 million each while the rest of the members got an increment of N14 million on the usual N28 Million per quarter.
The total sum shows that the increment amounted to N5.012 billion per quarter and the loan was taken for two quarters amounting to N10.024billion plus interest.
The statement further stated that the "loan was taken pursuant of an Executive Session decision of the House on Tuesday March 30, 2010 where the report of a 37 member Committee set up on March 25, 2010 to look into agitation of member for enhancement of running costs of members was reported by Hon. Independence Ogunewe. The report was approved by the House in executive Session of March 30 2010".