For those who may not know, I did not start writing about the National Assembly, the senate in particular, only after Senator Bukola Saraki sold off his party’s victory in the 2015 legislative elections and bastardised every known democratic ethos by gifting the opposition PDP that which rightly belongs to the party with the majority in the Red chamber, that is, the Senate Deputy Presidency. The article below, which will be the penultimate one of the articles I promised in my column of Sunday, 22, April 2018, was first published, Sunday, June 12, 2011. It read as follows:
In what will tantamount to a contradiction of no mean proportion, it is time Nigerians storm the National Assembly if its members chose to continue in their practice of what Chief Wole Olanipekun, former NBA Chairman, recently. appropriately described as a ‘criminal dehydration of the country’s economy’. But first, a word about the original storming of the Bastille in Paris in 1789, and why it will be such a shame were the National Assembly to let it happen here in Nigeria. The Storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris, 14 July 1789. The medieval prison, known as the Bastille, typified royal authority in the heart of Paris, comparable to the National Assembly at Abuja. While the prison had only seven inmates at the time of its storming, its fall was the flashpoint of the French Revolution for which reason, Le quatorze juillet (14 July) is celebrated annually in France as a public holiday.
During the reign of Louis XVI, France faced a major economic crisis arising out of her intervention in the American Revolution but was exacerbated by a regressive system of taxation. On 5 May 1789, the Estates- General convened to deal with the issue but was held back by archaic protocols of the Second Estate, consisting of the nobility which was only 2% of France’s population at the time. On 17 June 1789, the Third Estate, with its representatives drawn from the middle class, or the bourgeoisie, reconstituted themselves as the National Assembly; a body whose purpose was the creation of a French constitution. The king initially opposed it, but was forced to acknowledge the authority of the assembly which subsequently renamed itself the National Constituent Assembly on 9 July. The storming of the Bastille and the subsequent Declaration of The Rights of Man was the third event of the opening stages of the French revolution, the first being the revolt of the nobility, refusing to pay taxes, the second, the formation of the National Assembly and third, the Tennis Court Oath. The crowd, on the authority of the Assembly, broke open the prisons of the Abbaye to release some grenadiers of the French guards who had been imprisoned for refusing to fire on the people. That event, which was instigated by the National Constituent Assembly, the equivalent of our gluttonous National Assembly, gave mankind the now rhapsodized Storming Of
The Bastile. Our National Assembly members are, therefore, standing history on the head by their anti – people actions, rather than being on the side of the hoi polloi.
Nigerians must, therefore, be seized of the following facts. They must know, exactly, what the National Assembly is doing to poor Nigerians who are pleading to be paid, timely, a meager N18, 000.00 for 30 days’ grueling work. When, during the past week, the EFCC finally caught up with Dimeji Bankole, the erstwhile Speaker of the House, Nigerians came to know that together with the House leadership, the House of Representatives has been borrowing, illegally, for un-appropriated purposes. In their defence, 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’.
For what job, Nigerians should ask?
They also agreed payment of outstanding allowances dating back to 1999 – 2007, all from un-authorised funds .To meet these unilaterally approved emoluments, since the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, knew nothing about them, the leadership of the House resorted to borrowing. First it was 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 well aware that nobody is authorized to spend unappropriated funds and in spite of protests from the office of the Clerk of the National Assembly -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 that was the norm in civilized climes. Very deliberately, this House of cards was luxuriating in illegality with their eyes wide open just because they must live big. (In retrospect, this, incidentally, is the same National Assembly now grandstanding, claiming it wants to impeach President Muhammadu Buhari for spending some money from the Excess Crude Account, as if any PDP President ever approached the National Assembly before dipping their itchy hands in the Excess Crude Account, withdrawing billions of dollars most of which ended up being stolen)
Much earlier, The NIGERIAN VILLAGE SQUARE had commented on the huge salaries and allowances which the kleptomaniacs allocated to themselves . “Comparative analysis, it said, reveals the scale of the legislators’ unrealistic earnings. While an Indian lawmaker earns $23,988 (N3.7m) , a Nigerian senator earns about $1.2m (N182m) and a House member, N127m per annum. Nigeria has a meagre per capita income of $2,249 compared to America’s $46,350, yet that did not stop the Nigerian legislator from earning more than his American counterpart. A U.S congress man earns $174,000 per annum. But the last known Nigerian senator’s pay was N240m, while a House member earned N203.8m. These have since been revised upwards”. Continuing, the Nigerian Village Square observed further that “the national minimum wage of N18,000, being rebuffed by many states for no fault of theirs but because of an iniquitous revenue sharing formula, is difficult to pay because our Abuja fat cats must literally take everything”. The minimum wage, says the web site, represents just 0.13 per cent of a senator‘s salary. Using their old earnings as the bench mark, a minimum wage earner will need to work for at least 777 years to earn a senator‘s N182m annual pay. Further breakdown indicates that a senator earns N498, 630. 137 a day, N20, 776.28 per hour and N346.270 per minute. In other words, a senator’s daily pay is twice the annual pay of the minimum wage earner. A senator’s hourly pay is also more than the monthly pay of the minimum. Similarly, minimum wage is just 0.18 per cent of a member of the House of Representatives’ pay. A minimum wage earner will need to work for at least 542 years to earn the N127m annual salary of a member of the House of Representatives”, it concluded.
And how many Nigerians are we talking about? 469 out of 140 million. Nigerians have written and spoken more than enough on this and it is time the people take the bull by the horns. With PDP’s huge numerical superiority in the assembly but being mostly, a booty-sharing rally of rent seekers, Nigerians would have to checkmate this policy of ‘monkey dey work, baboon they chop’, by themselves. Concerned individuals must now call attention to this unbelievable aberration just like Chief Olanipekun has done, and stop it by whatever means possible. Students, market women, professionals, artisans and ordinary Nigerians must spring up eternal, to draw needed attention to this totally abhorrent behaviour. Failure to get any respite by the legislators drastically reducing their earnings, Nigerians may have to call on the Nigerian Labour Congress to take the lead on behalf of the people.
We must chase them out.
