Jumbo pay: NASS guilty as charged

AT a time when Nigerians wallow in biting hunger and excruciating hardship, which recently snowballed into the deadly #EndBadGovernance and hunger protests, revelations have again emerged that the federal lawmakers revel in provocative opulence. For repeatedly urging Nigerians to endure while they live in contemptible luxury, the National Assembly members are hypocrites. The lawmakers are guilty as charged.

Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo recently brought the lawmakers’ excessive remuneration back into national consciousness during a visit of a group of lawmakers campaigning for a single presidential term of six years. He castigated the lawmakers for brazenly fixing their salaries and allowances and paying themselves obscenely in the flagrant usurpation of the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission powers.

Obasanjo berated the executive for giving the federal legislators “things they are not entitled to,” including the annual constituency allowance and SUVs. A senator, Abdul Ningi, was recently suspended after alleging that the executive directly transferred between N200 million and N500 million to ranking senators for constituency projects.

Also, the impact of federal lawmakers’ oversight functions has not been felt since 1999, mostly because they are bedevilled by sleaze.

Despite empty denials, Sumaila Kawu, representing Kano South in the Senate, has unwittingly confirmed the daylight robbery by the NASS under Godswill Akpabio and Tajudeen Abbas. Kawu revealed that senators go home with N21 million monthly as running costs. This is separate from “a little over (the) N600,000” net salary. This is state capture.

At $252 billion, the GDP is down to fourth in Africa. The country is swimming in debt. Electricity supply is under 5,000 megawatts. In comparison, Egypt, and South Africa boast 58,000MW each. Nigerians living in extreme poverty rose to 87 million in 2018, overtaking India then as the global capital of misery. Therefore, there is no justification for the blatant extortion by legislators.

Indeed, the brigandage is deepening. The figure is up from the N13.5 million – apart from net salaries of N750,000 – that the senator who represented Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani, said each Eighth NASS senator took home monthly. This is staggering lopsidedness in a country struggling to pay N70,000 monthly as the minimum wage. Nigeria serviced its debt with 74 per cent of its income in the first quarter.

Each senator receives a monthly salary and allowances of N1.06 million, per the Chairman, Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Committee, Muhammed Bello. In between, the NASS expropriates billions for members. Sani and Kawu’s testimonies are closer to the truth.

The Senate spokesperson, Yemi Adaramodu, claimed that Kawu confused take-home pay with running costs. According to him, running costs are allocated for the daily operation of senators’ offices and other statutory officials, including constituency office staff, oversight functions, and community engagements. This is indefensible.

The Economist of London says Nigeria’s lawmakers are the highest paid in the world. Fittingly, it describes the Nigerian legislature as “the filthiest arena of the most corrupt politicians in the world.”

The evidence-studded revelations by the ICPC that the senators diverted the N100 billion they collected for constituency projects to non-existing projects have exposed the Senate as a chamber of scam.

The argument of jumbo pay has been a front-burner issue of public engagement in the Fourth Republic, especially after Obasanjo’s exit. Federal lawmakers have shamefully employed running costs to undermine the 1999 Constitution, which vests in the RMAFC the power to determine the salaries and other allowances of federal lawmakers.

The NASS is a parliament of opacity. Civil society organisations and well-meaning Nigerians should compel it to live by the constitution on its allowances.

The lawmakers must redeem this ignoble and unacceptable reputation and live up to the expectations as a people-and development-oriented parliament.

The executive should stop indulging the lawmakers.