A former member of the House of Representatives Uche Onyeagucha, yesterday said that the budget of the National Assembly remains one of the most opaque documents in Nigeria saying more effort will be required to compel the lawmakers to publicly disclose their budget details.

According to Ceoafrica, Onyeagucha who chairs the board of Right to Know (R2K), a non-profit group championing right to access officially held information, spoke at the launch of a website it partnered with the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) to develop.

“The budget of the National Assembly is the most secret document in Nigeria. Nobody has ever seen it. National Assembly looks into every other person’s budget but nobody sees their budget,” the former lawmaker from Imo state said.

“Even when we were there, we were asking every day; the louder you ask, the more likely you might get suspended for daring to ask”, he said adding that the budget “is the single most important document the world needs to know today”.

Despite months of repeated promises to publicly disclose the details of the lawmakers’ budget, the National assembly leadership has failed to honour the promise.

Onyeagucha said Nigerians have been in the dark about the budget because there is no institution like the NEITI to push for public access to the document.