The Eight National Assembly co-chaired by the Senate President, Abubakar Bukola Saraki and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, will surely be remembered for many things and events.

Since the two principals assumed their respective offices in the green and red chambers they have led the house through various controversies and upheavals, while some were mild events, others gained national attention.

Here is three of the big events that shook the Eight National Assembly.

Open NASS

After promises from the house leaderships, especially Saraki, the budgetary allocation of the National Assembly was released for the first time in 2019.

The 45-page document shows that a total of N139,500,000,000 was budgeted for the National Assembly in the year 2018, the Senate got N35,582,085,699 while N57,425,137,793 was earmarked for the House of Representatives.

In same budget, N10,202,095,928 was budgeted for legislative aides, the National Assembly office got N15,389,235,912, while the National Assembly Commission got N2,736,081,266.

The National Assembly Legislative Institute got N4,373,813,596 and N1,145,143,254 was appropriated for service-wide vote of the Legislature.

Making the budget public confirmed the fears harboured by Nigerians that the National Assembly being run in the country is one of the most expensive, if not the most expensive in all democratic countries across the globe.

Budget Padding Allegations

Since the issue on budget padding in the eight assembly was made known by one of the members of the Appropriations Committee, Abdulmumin Jibrin, that the House of Representatives under Dogara, had looted the nation’s treasury through padding of the 2016 budget, it has become a full blown controversy that continues to trail the assembly.

Jibrin’s allegations also caught the air of the EFCC but he paid the ultimate price when he was suspended from the green chambers for over a year before he was recalled.

While budget padding is not new to the national assembly as it deals with either reducing or increasing the estimates of the budget, it was definitely a show of shame for the eight assembly which increased the appropriation bill, three times in a row within its four years tenure.

Stealing of the Senate Mace

In April 2018, the national assembly went into frenzy when the mace in the red chambers was stolen in broad daylight before plenary began for the day.

The robbery, executed in the full glare of lawmakers, journalists and other observers in the Senate Chamber of the National Assembly bore the imprints of a security operation with at least two of the 10 attackers identifying themselves as police officers.

What made the daylight snatching of the mace quite intriguing is the fact that the perpetrators came into the Senate with Senator Ovie Omo-Agege.

They walked behind the senator, as his guests, to gain entrance into the Senate chamber, and stole the mace, the symbol of authority of the parliament without which decisions made by the lawmakers are invalid.

Meanwhile, after the mace was stolen, the senators went into an executive session where it was decided that the replacement for the mace will be used at plenary that day.

Later in the day, after frantic search for the mace by security operatives, the police recovered the mace within Abuja metropolis where it had been abandoned.

According to the statement released by the police, it was quoted saying: “The police teams engaged in massive raids of identified criminal spots/flashpoints, stop and search operations, visibility and confidence building patrols, intelligence gathering which forced the suspected miscreants to abandon the mace at a point under the flyover before the City Gate, where a patriotic passerby saw it and alerted the Police.”

This is not the first time that the mace will be stolen as it occurred in 2000 but this may be the only time when it occurred in the full glare of many witnesses while the media within the red chambers were on live feed.

However, there are other events that rocked the National Assembly within its four-year mandate like the Strike action by National Assembly workers, the delay of the budget every year and the Shi’ite group overpowering security operatives and gaining entrance into the first gate of the assembly, amongst others.

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