Ezekwesili challenged National Assembly to a public hearing on extravagant cost of governance.

Mrs. Obiageli Ezekwesili, former minister for Education in Nigeria, in a statement on Wednesday, defended her submissions at the Civil Society Roundtable hosted by Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, on Monday, where she gave details on the budgetary allocations to the National Assembly in the last eight years.
She still stands on the fact that the National Assembly gulped approximately N1tn in the last eight years.The figures, according to Ezekwesili, are as follows:

2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013
N54.79bn	N54.79bn	N 66.4bn	N114.39bn	N158.92bn	N150bn	N150bn	N150bn	N150bn

She has, therefore, challenged the National Assembly to a public hearing to defend her claims.This presentation was immediately contested by members of the National Assembly, who rebuked her for what they described as blackmail against the legislature.She said “I wish to state with absolute respect for our lawmakers and our institution that it will be more valuable and enriching for our democracy if instead of the abusive language in their recent reaction, the NASS immediately offered me and the rest of the Nigerian public, the opportunity of a public hearing on their budgetary allocation and the very relevant issue of their remuneration.“Doing so would be consistent with global practice across countries of the world, where emphasis is on tenets of Open Budget to enable citizens to track to the disaggregated level all use of public resources across every arm and level of government.” She argued that her presentation approached the topic more broadly, by calling attention to the fundamentally unsustainable economic structure that had caused Nigeria’s development over the last 53 years to lag behind those of countries with similar political history.