Our National Assembly members have demonstrated from the onset of the fourth republic that their loyalty was to their members rather than to the nation as some of them tactlessly announced that they were in a hurry to recoup their investments having sold their properties to contest the election. It was therefore obvious that a total package of about N20m for senators and N18m for members of the lower house approved by Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission was not going to be adequate for the needs, let alone the greed of our lawmakers
It was not long before they went ahead to appropriate about N159b for themselves and in spite of public indignation refused to subject its disbursement to public scrutiny. Not satisfied, they openly demanded bribes from Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) or opted to hijack their projects as was the case with contracts for the rural electrification projects which were awarded to some fictitious companies owned by the lawmakers. Ministerial nominees were also forced to part with huge sums of money before confirmation. Haunted by financial scandals, The Punch in an editorial titled “Time to tame greedy and reckless National Assembly” in its edition of February 1, 2016, said: “By their greed, corruption, opaqueness, insensitivity and monumental incompetence, parliamentarians, since 1999, have stunted the entrenchment of democracy and atrophied development”.
Our self-serving lawmakers have little regard for public opinion. Their collective response to critics of their financial recklessness until the latest call for restructuring as a possible solution, has always been the same – attack the messenger in order to divert attention from the message. Not even Obasanjo, whom they mischievously call their father, is spared whenever the issue of their financial recklessness is raised. He narrowly escaped impeachment in 2000 and 2005 for standing between his ‘children’ and their criminal padding of the budget sometimes with as much as N600b. Obasanjo has continued to refer to corrupt members of the National Assembly as ‘armed robbers’.
Lamido Sanusi, the then CBN governor following his submission during a 2013 lecture he delivered at Igbinedion University where he had said cornering of N136.26b or 25.44% of government overhead by the National Assembly was unhealthy for the economy suffered the same fate. Ndoma –Egba, the then Deputy Senate Leader (now stalwart of APC) did not only dismiss Sanusis’s remarks as ‘a calculated attempt to bring the National Assembly to disrepute and a plot to incite the public against us”, he moved a motion that he along with his Minister of Finance, be summoned to defend themselves before the chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, Iyiola Omisore, currently repaying about N1b he, according to EFCC, fraudulently received from Dazuki, ex-President Jonathan’s National Security Adviser(NSA), to fight the Osun 2014 gubernatorial election.
But confronted last week with N14m and N8m as monthly take-home pay for senators and their lower house counterparts, figures Channels TV claimed it obtained exclusively, Senator Aliyu Abdullahi, the chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, changed the narrative. He now says – “For us in the National Assembly, the question that needs to be asked is “what the cost of having democracy is and what is the cost of not having democracy?”
Unfortunately, Senator Abdullahi and the insensitive lawmakers he speaks for, have sustained their war against our people especially the most vulnerable 112 million who live below poverty line because they rightly believe all of us suffer from collective amnesia. But nothing can be more humiliating than Abdulahi’s claim that the greed and financial recklessness of our lawmakers are in pursuit of democratic ethos.
Realising that our legislators are beyond reproach, Sagay, who recently spoke at the Wole Soyinka Annual Public Lecture at the University of Benin, had called for urgent restructuring of the nation into regions and return to the 1963 Constitution, modified to suit our present circumstances as the only way to stop the bumper pay being received by the senators. He insisted that from information at his disposal, “a Nigerian Senator earns about N29 million a month and over N3 billion a year”. He went on to state how he arrived at his figures: “Basic salary N2,484,245.50; hardship allowance, N1,242, 122.70; constituency allowance N4, 968, 509.00; furniture allowance N7, 452, 736.50; newspaper allowance N1, 242, 122.70; N1,863,184.12; entertainment N828,081.83; personal assistant N621,061.37; vehicle maintenance allowance N1,863,184.12; leave allowance N248,424.55; severance gratuity N7, 425,736.50; and motor vehicle allowance N9, 936,982.00.”
Sagay also added ”Wardrobe allowance N621, 061.37; recess allowance N248, 424.55″. “These are besides budget padding, which is a stable means of drilling money from the poor people of this nation. If you have true federalism, that money will not be available for them to blow”, Sagay concluded.
All that was needed to invalidate Sagay’s figures which the lawmakers claimed were based on beer parlour a rumour was to confirm or deny if those headings exist and if they do how much was allocated to each heading. But they substituted that simple procedure with attack on Sagay’s person. After falsely accusing him of employing ‘uncouth, unprintable words’ and of ’hate speech, they deployed ‘love’ words like “senile, jaded, rustic and out-dated” to describe noble Professor Sagay.
Sagay should take solace. I can assure Professor Sagay that the inimitable Victor Olabisi Onabanjo of Aiyekoto fame who often laced his bitter truth with humour can even from his grave see the purity of his heart and the nobility of his intentions.
And what would have been Onabanjo’s response to the Senate’s unwarranted virulent attack on Sagay’s person? He would have simply admonished those who live in glass houses not to throw stones by asking – Are we speaking of the same house who, Gabriel Suswan, recently governor of Benue and who as two terms member of the Lower House authoritatively declared that of the unwieldy 360 members of the house, only 20% that contribute to discussions at plenaries are literate?
He would have in addition reminded our lawmakers that it was not Sagay but a distinguished and respectable member of the Senate that likened the behaviour of one of their cantankerous member to a dog, thug and tout. Was it not in one of these hallowed chambers turned-house of comedy where a member who a probe confirmed obtained a third class degree from our local university after falsely claiming to be an alumni of many prestigious universities across the world, celebrated his achievement by adorning himself with an academic gown reserved for only those who earned doctoral degrees?
Aiyekoto would have also reminded us that we find those who “talks like a man who is constantly under the influence of some substance or who are constantly agitated” in a house that harbours alleged drug pushers or those facing EFCC charges for financial malfeasance or earning two salaries in the guise of pensions when the real pensioners are dying on the queue after a lifelong service to their father land.
I am only guessing what Aiyekoto (the world hates the truth) would have said in the face of an unprovoked attack on a patriot by indecent people some of who should be behind bars.
