N4.7 Billion Vehicles NASS jolly ride hits road bump

Across the 923763.3 square kilometers that make up the country, one place  where President Mohammadu Buhari’s change mantra and transparency could  go largely  ineffective is the National Assembly, Abuja.

Here, the federal legislators and the  public service bureaucrats, including employees of the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC) and the Nigeria Institute of Legislative Studies, all of whom number less than 10000, have been ‘managing’ an annual budget of N150 billion over the last five years.

Sections 7 (10 and (2) of the National Assembly Service Commission Act 2000 empower the commission to formulate and implement guidelines for its functions; appoint persons to hold or act in the office of  the Clerk to the National Assembly, Deputy Clerk to the National Assembly, Clerk of the Senate, Clerk of the House of Representatives, Deputy Clerk of the Senate, Deputy Clerk of the House of Representatives, and all other offices in the service of the National Assembly. Also, the Commission may make appointments on promotion and transfer and confirm such appointments; and dismiss and exercise disciplinary control over persons holding or acting in such offices

Those who really know would attest that several of the top bureaucrats in the management of the National Assembly are adept at manipulation, using every tool possible to bend the rules.

Their number one targets are  newly-elected legislators who are made to take the first bait that comes by way of  old and new humongous monetary benefits.

Pulling the strings however are the anonymous civil servants.

For instance, while the generality of Nigerians keep condemning the  legislators over the planned purchase of N4.7billion exotic cars for ‘committee work’ , the vehicles’huge insurance premium which runs into hundreds of millions of Naira and arranged by the National Assembly’s bureaucrats, easily escapes critical attention.

Whereas in the  United States from where Nigeria copied its presidential system the citizens are at liberty to look up every detail of salaries and allowances of all elected government officials,the story is different here in Nigeria.

Last year, an analyst said: “the yearly allocation for the National Assembly, which has less than 10,000 individuals on its payroll, surpasses the annual budgets of 21 of Nigeria’s 36 states including Katsina, Benue and Jigawa – all with populations of more than 4 million people”.

In Nigeria’s unduly secretive system that is egocentrically complemented by the National Assembly bureaucrats’ peculiarly opaque financial management standards, very few really know exactly how much their representatives receive as salaries and allowances.

Most times, matters pertaining to such issues are attended to in the manner of a secret cult by civil servants who find the non-transparent methods suitable for their ulterior motives. At other times, the  legislators meet in conclave, euphemistically defined under their rules as ‘executive Sessions’. Behind closed doors and without the keeping of records, adjustments, delay of allowance and other sundry matters are sorted out.

As recently as the  third week of December 2015, the  legislators collected a total of about N4, 340, 600, 000 as  quarterly allowances.

Each Senator went home with N13.4 million while Representative got N8 million.

Left to linger since April, 2015 was the approximately N200 million meant for about 3, 000 legislative aides’ quarterly Duty Tour Allowance of about N75, 000 – 90, 000 each. Similarly, in spite of the National Assembly’s multibillion Naira budget, the aides who served between  June 2011 and  May 2015 have not been paid their severance allowance of between N1 million and  N3 million since May last year.

Nonetheless, billions leave the National Assembly’s coffers every month, mostly for settlement of various allowances for the National Assembly management staff and legislators while contractors who represent various interests also get paid.

All these are among basic peculiar characteristics and attitudinal dispositions which set the National Assembly apart from its  counterparts in other parts of the world.

The near-absolute contrast with the system in the United States’ legislature is of great interest. While the Nigerian federal legislature obviously trails the American Congress in the understanding and exercise of the virtues of modern democracy, the Nigerian legislature is ahead in earning robust salaries and allowances.

Shown below are the current annual salaries for the top elected and appointed US government officials, along with the annual salaries for these officials in 2000 or 2001 (as officially indicated on http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/governmentjobs/a/Annual-Salaries-Of-Top-Us-Government-Officials.htm) :

 

Executive Branch

President of the United States

2014: $400,000

2000: $200,000

 

Note:The president’s salary was increased from $200,000 in 2001 to $400,000 in 2014. The president’s current salary of $400,000 includes a $50,000 expense allowance.

 

Vice President of the United States

2015: $230,700

2000: $181,400

 

Legislative Branch – US Congress

Rank-and-File Senators and Representatives

2015: $174,000

2000: $141,300

 

Speaker of the House

2015: $223,500

2000: $181,400

 

House and Senate Majority and Minority Leaders

2015: $193,400

2000: $156,900

 

Rank-and-file Members of the House and Senate – $174,000 per year

Members’ Allowance (MRA) – $1,353,205.13

 

Judicial Branch

Chief Justice of the United States

2015: $258,100

2000: $181,400

 

It is worth noting that the current salary for rank-and-file members of the House and Senate is $174,000 per year. Members are free to turn down pay increase and some choose to do so.

In the United States’ House of Representatives, allowances are put under the Members’ Representational Allowance (MRA) which is made available to help members defray expenses resulting from three specific components of their “representational duties,” those being: the personal expenses component; the office expenses component; and the mailing expenses component.

In 2012, individual representatives received MRA allowances ranging from $1,270,129 to $1,564,613, with an average of $1,353,205.13. Most of each member’s annual MRA allowance is used to pay their office personnel. In 2012, for example, the office personnel allowance for each member was $944,671 and they can use the sum to engage up to18 full time, permanent employees and up to four part time or temporary employees.

Members are not allowed to use their MRA allowance to pay any personal or political campaigning expenses. Members must pay any personal or office expenses in excess of the MRA out of their own pockets.

Allowances for office expenses vary from member to member based on the distance between the member’s home district and Washington, D.C., and average rent for office space in the member’s home district. Allowances for mailing vary based on the number of residential mailing addresses in the member’s home district as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The House sets the funding levels for the MRA annually as part of the federal budget process. According to the CRS report, this amount decreased from a total of $660 million for fiscal year 2010, to $573.9 million for fiscal year 2012.

In the United Kingdom, details of what a Member of Parliament collects as salary and allowances are easily accessible to all citizens online.

In July, 2012, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority presented a report that recommended the increment of MPs’ pay to £74,000 a year with effect from 2015.

Comparisons of lawmakers’ salaries across the world as made by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and published by ‘The Economist’ magazine on July 5, 2013 was presented in the chart below:

Thus far, near-watertight arrangements sustained by bureaucrats help to prevent the Nigerian public from having access to legislators’ earning figures.

At a first glance, it is easy to agree that Nigeria’s federal legislators now earn next to nothing as the prevailing official monthly salaries as at January, 2016 are as follows:

Senators – N840, 000

Members, House of Representatives – N680, 000

Soon after the inauguration of the 7th National Assembly in June 2011 each Senator went home with  N15 million for transportation and N25 million for housing. Gradually, their quarterly allowances were increased  to around N60 million each. On the other hand,members of the House of Representatives received  slightly above N40 million each at a point in time. It seems there is a pattern of taking lesser amounts as quarterly allowance on resumption and then, jacking it up after citizens’ attention shifts.

Buhari’s change era appears to have changed things but it hardly changed anything. Thus, currently the NASS management has helped federal legislators make some changes in the disbursement of their quarterly allowances.  With effect from June, 2015

Senators are  paid N13. 4 million each per month pro-rata quarterly allowance while Members of the  House of Representatives got  N8 million per month pro-rata quarterly allowance each.

The allowances are meant to cover office stationery, computer materials, transportation (local and foreign travels) etc.

The amounts mentioned above reflect some of the National Assembly bureaucrats’ tactical manoeuvrings that clearly exclude other perks from being included.

For instance, a few billions of naira is to be expended on – as they say “the procurement of cars for committee use”. As all the federal legislators belong to several committees and hold either chairmanship or vice chairmanship positions, it is very convenient to say that each of them is collecting the car on behalf of a committee!

What happened to ‘committee cars’ procured at outrageous prices of about N9 million each in 2012? At the end of their tenure, each Senator went away with at least one Prado jeep sold off by the National Assembly management at N2 million.

Built in elsewhere in the 2016 budget proposals is N200 billion Intervention Fund to enable each senator and member of the House of Representatives decide Federal projects to be sited in his or her constituency.

In the past, especially during the Obasanjo era, there were talks of legislators’ demand for the ministries and parastatals to ‘wet the ground’ before their budgetary proposals could be given a favourable hearing during budget defence sessions. It is reasonable to assume that the APC-dominated National Assembly would not yield to such temptation.

 

AGAIN, THE CRAFTY BUREAUCRATS

The public does not know the exact fate of the official residences used by the predecessors of the current Senate President and the House Speaker. The Speaker, Honourable  Yakubu Dogara’s simplicity makes it easy for him to remain in his official residence, without any complaint till date.

Bureaucrats in the National Assembly and their colleagues in the Federal Capital Territory Administration have deemed it fit to ensure that the Federal Capital Territory’s N37.7 billion budget proposals for this year includes N502.5m  for the construction of a new official residence  for the Senate President.

A breakdown of the FCTA’s budget indicates that the N502.5m  estimate for the construction of  the Senate President’s new residence covers the cost of “site clearance and earthworks, outstanding liabilities, general items and miscellaneous works”. Another sum of N200, 694, 435 is proposed to cover “consultancy payments and outstanding liabilities” for the construction of the Senate President’s residence.

Besides, the FCT is to embark on the construction of an official residence for the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives at a cost of N1, 035, 652, 770 even though the incumbent Speaker, Honourable Yakubu Dogara currently lives in his personal house.

As for the multi-billion Naira expenditure on procurement of new exotic cars for federal legislators, many are unaware that the National Assembly bureaucrats routinely oversee arrangements for the payment of insurance premium that usually runs into a few hundreds of millions of Naira.

With forceful arguments being voiced out through some Senators and members of the lower house, the National Assembly has been trying to reject inclusion in the Treasury Single Account (TSA) system. The argument has dwelt on allegations that the executive arm is encroaching on the National Assembly’s legislative autonomy. However, it is also clear that TSA makes it a complicated affair for government officials who may contemplate regular frivolous withdrawals for expenditure  items that hardly conform with public service rules.

A recent Premium Times report entitled “Inside the massive money laundering in Nigeria’s National Assembly” detailed how senior NASS bureaucrats and their subordinates routinely had hundreds of bank transactions that flagrantly flout extant laws.

The report showed how the federal legislature abused  the nation’s financial regulations, especially in its banking transactions over  the last six years.

It spoke of how,  between 2009 and 2015, the management arm of the federal legislature “extensively violated the Money Laundering Act (2004, 2011) in banking transactions leading to the withdrawals of about N42 billion of public funds.

“Some members of the lawmaking arms of the legislature – Senate and the House of Representatives – were also involved in the violation of an Act they laboured for months to enact,” the report stated.

Also, the National Assembly management had been trying for long, to exclude itself from the Federal Government’s computerised payroll system, the Integrated Personnel & Payroll Information System (IPPIS). It is a centralized database system created for the entire public service with single, accurate source of employee information to facilitate storage of personnel records and prevent leakages caused by use of ghost workers. In many ministries and parastatals, the adoption of IPPIS consistently uncovered hundreds of ghost workers that account for huge chunks of salary payment.

Yet one of the more brazen practices of NASS’ bureaucrats is in the use of official cars and drivers. The National Assembly has almost one hundred directors and deputy directors. Even though the Federal Government’s monetization programme effectively prohibits the use of official cars, these privileged civil servants who convince legislators to insist on the purchase of new cars also get their share of new and posh cars.

With monetization, most Federal Government departments saw the need to reassign numerous drivers as there is no longer any need for such personnel to drive officials around. However, the National Assembly currently has about 300 drivers on its payroll.

Yet more bothersome to those who believe in the current federal administration’s change mantra which includes justice, is the palpable injustice of withholding former legislative aides’ benefits.

In July, 2015, the non-payment of about 3, 000 aides’ April 2015 Duty Tour Allowance (DTA) totalling approximately N200 aroused suspicions that a clique within the management of the National Assembly had perfected arrangements to either divert a portion or the entire sum or keep it in fixed deposit to earn interests..

In addition, at that time, there were suspicions that even though all Senators and members of the House of Representatives in the 7th National Assembly had received every kobo of all outstanding allowances in addition to other new payments worth millions of Naira upon resumption, the National Assembly management is harbouring people who were being smart by half.

Rather than calm nerves, an official memo signed by Director, Personnel Management Department Dr. I. S. Habu, on behalf of the Clerk of the National Assembly and pasted on various Notice Boards within the National Assembly further spurred suspicions as it unusually bore no date.

It said:”I am directed to inform all legislative aides to please be patient regarding the payment of their severance gratuity and duty tour allowance (DTA), as management is making concerted efforts to secure the funds from the Ministry of Finance.

“I am to add that as soon as the monies are released, payment will commence without any delay,” Habu stated.

Up till now, the outstanding sums totaling more than N 3 billion have remained unpaid while top bureaucrats pay millions as allowances to legislators every month since June 2015 and also take care of themselves. After settling legislators’ allowances, one of the next priorities is payment of contractors and suppliers of sundry items as arranged by top civil servants at NASS.

On December 1, last year, the Senate passed   a total sum of N574,532,726,857 as 2015 supplementary budget for President Muhammadu Buhari. It included provision of N10.6 billion for balance of severance gratuity and allowance of out gone and incoming legislators as well as the severance benefits of former  legislative aides. Inexplicably, even after 109 Senators had each received their N13. 4 million allowances just before the public holidays in December last year, National Assembly’s bureaucrat saw no need to either pay or offer explanation to aides who have been waiting since May, last year.