In your case, with all due respect, you’re not supposed to fix your salaries. But you decide what you pay yourself, the allowances that you give yourselves (including) newspaper allowances.
“You give yourselves all sorts of things, and you know it is not right. It is immoral, (yet) you are doing it, the Senate is doing it, and you are beating your chests about it. In some cases, the executive gives you what you’re not entitled to. You all got N200 million (each).” – Former President Olusegun Obasanjo while addressing some members of the the House of Representatives who paid him a courtesy call in Abeokuta recently.
Apparently, for some agencies of government, the fear of the National Assembly is the beginning of wisdom. On top of that ignominious ladder is the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission whose
Chairman, Mohammed Shehu, in the process of trying to shield the Assembly from attacks like the one by President Obasanjo, was furtherest from the truth when, this past week, he caused the following statement to be issued to the Nigerian public on how the Assembly’s jumbo emoluments came about.
According to him: “A breakdown of their monthly earnings revealed that each Senator collects a monthly salary and allowances of N1,063,860, consisting of a basic salary, N168,866:70; motor vehicle, fuelling and maintenance allowance, N126,650:00; and personal assistant, N42,216:66;
domestic staff N126,650:00; entertainment, N50,660:00; utilities, N50,660:00; newspapers/periodicals, N25,330:00; wardrobe, N42,216,66:00; house maintenance, N8,443.33:00; and constituency allowance.
“It is instructive to note that some allowances are regular while others are non-regular. Regular allowances are paid regularly with basic salary while non-regular allowances are paid as at when due. “For instance, furniture allowance (N6,079,200:00) and severance gratuity (N6,079,200:00) are paid once in every tenure, and vehicle allowance (N8,105,600:00) which is optional, is a loan which the beneficiary has to pay before leaving office.”
I urge Nigerians to pay necessary attention to these huge sums of money at a time hunger has driven millions of Nigerian youths to the street in what they called the Days of Rage. Yet as you read this, our senators are yet to indicate that they would give up anything to cushion the effects of the poor economy to mirror the House of Representative members who, cleverly, slashed 25 per cent of their salaries for six months rather than give off even 10 per cent of their humongous allowances as sacrifice.
While a layman, with no relationship, at all, to the Revenue Mobilisation Commission can be forgiven for making the incredulous statement by the Chairman, it is absolutely beyond rationality for the him to try to sell that statement to Nigerians except, of course, he has been away from this country in the last decade and a half because, sometime within the period, National Assembly members awarded to themselves, allowances that were far and above those ever recommended by the commission.I cannot understand the Commission Chairman now playing dumb to that fact, as he did in his statement.
We shall,however, come to that anon.
But he was not yet done as he went on:”the RMAFC does not possess the constitutional authority to enforce compliance with the remuneration package for lawmakers.” That statement will be strange to Nigerians.
But then what other agency of government does?
Further expatiating, he said:“The commission also wishes to use this opportunity to state that any allegation regarding other allowance(s) being enjoyed by any political, public office holder outside those provided in the Remuneration (Amendment) Act, 2008 should be explained by the person who made the allegation”.
Really?
Why not by those enjoying them? I urge the reader to chalk that up to government agencies’ infernal fear of the National Assembly with its powers over budget approval.
He then capped it all up, hectoring: “To avoid misinformation and misrepresentation of facts capable of misleading citizens and members of the international community, the commission considers it most appropriate and necessary to request Nigerians and any other interested party to avail themselves of the opportunity to access the actual details of the present remuneration package for political, public and judicial office holders in Nigeria published on its website: bla bla bla.”
My reaction to that is this:
If the allowances on the website bear any semblance to the actual allowances currently being earned by National Assembly members , it would only mean that RMAFC, behind our backs, was browbeaten into subsequently approving allowances which it knew nothing about; nor granted in the first instance which will be quite a shame. And if that turns out the case, it would mean that while government refrain in this harshest of times has been that ordinary Nigerians should further tighten their belt and make additional sacrifices, even where that might mean a family having no more than one meal a day, all that concerns Almighty RMAFC is more enjoyment for National Assembly members; a people who, as Olatunji Ololade recently put it, already “enjoy obscene privileges and spoils from the commonwealth.” This, indeed, is the reason our elections have become a do or die affair.
Now to the ‘koko’ of the matter in pidgin – speak.
The RMAFC Chairman had deliberatel about it. the claim by a Senator, Abdurrahman Kawu Samaila(NNPP, Kano South) that he collects N21M monthly besides his salary of nearly N1000 per month even as that confession was actually an additional evidence to what Senator Shehu Sani had, long ago, told Nigerians about him earning N13.5M monthly which means that our ‘Ogas at the top’ have since increased their lolly by a princely N6.5M per month, an amount enough to pay the salaries of nearly 100 workers @ N70,000 per month.
So just in case RMAFC truly doesn’t know how those mountainous allowances came about, let me help them.
I’II do that by quoting the relevant portion, only, of my article of 12 June, 2011 on these pages, titled: ‘It Is Time We Storm This Bastille’.
It reads as follows:
“When, during the past week, the EFCC finally caught up with Hon.Dimeji Bankole, the erstwhile Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nigerians came to know that under his leadership, the House of Representatives has been borrowing, illegally, for un-appropriated purposes. It was with an eye on such funds, we learnt, that the following new allowances were approved at an executive session on March 30, 2010 : Speaker, N100m
Deputy Speaker, N80m, House Leader, N60m, Deputy House Leader, N57.5m,
Chief Whip, N55m, Deputy Chief Whip, N54.5m, Minority Leader N54.5m,
Minority Whip, N50m, Deputy Minority Leader, N50m
Deputy Minority Whip, N50m’.
They also agreed payment of outstanding allowances, dating back to 1999 – 2007, all from these un-authorised funds .To meet these unilaterally approved emoluments, since the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, KNEW NOTHING about them, the House leadership resorted to borrowing. First it took a N2.5billion loan from the National Assembly, then another NI.5 billion from the Senate Committee on Appropriation, followed by N6 billion from diverse sources; all by a body fully aware that it is illegal to spend unappropriated funds, and despite protests from the office of the Clerk of the National Assembly. This is grand impunity, if ever there was one.
The Clerk’s negative reaction caught no ice with the House leadership which further sourced the N6 billion loan, all of which they DECREED should be included in the 2011 budget, as if Nigeria is a banana Republic.
Meanwhile, they continue to bandy about RUNNING COST. Where exactly are they running to and where has this led Nigeria in 25 years, that is, since 1999?
If it is truly running cost, do these legislators retire the amounts advanced to them to know how it was spent?
Enough is enough.
Let me conclude this article by telling members of the National Assembly a thing or two about Sweden.
Sweden, a Scandinavian country with a population of 10,673,669, is one of the wealthiest, most socially just, and least corrupt nations on earth.
Swedish Ministers and MPs do not have official cars – not to talk of buying cars costing N150M for each of its members – nor do they have private drivers. Instead, they travel in buses and trains, just like the citizens they represent”.
Any lessons?
