Nigeria’s National Assembly, NASS, members comprising the Senate and House of Representatives, are in for yet another increase in their take-home pay. Going by an exclusive report by LegisReportsNG, the lawmakers are posed to do everything possible to make the new pay-rise become reality soon.
It was gathered from the report that the new pay-rise will see each Nigerian Senator pocket N56 million as against N40 million a Senator gets quarterly before this increment, while each House of Reps member smiles home with N42 million, thereby saying goodbye to N27 million each Reps member takes home before this new increase.
The news journal reportedly gathered from impeccable sources that “this new increment, in both the Senate and the House, is being implemented in a manner of subterfuge that will conceal it from the Nigerian public because the payment has been arranged to be paid in instalments to members and under shady sub-heads such that prying eyes within the national assembly system will not easily decode.”
It further reported that the House Committee Chairman on Media, Hon Zakari Mohammed, was contacted for his official response on the matter but he (the Chairman) referred LegisReportNG to the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, RMAFC, which is a body that fixes salaries of public servants in Nigeria.
The Chairman, however, denied knowledge of such pay-rise and also failed to disclose to the reporter his quarterly take-home pay.
On his part, Hon Mohammed’s counterpart in the Senate, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, did not respond to “repeated calls to his phone” to get his reaction on the story.
The ‘fat’ pay of Nigeria’s federal lawmakers has always been a subject of public criticism. It is believed that an average Senator earns more than the American President, who is thought to be the most powerful person in the world.
At the moment, the minimum wage of a Nigerian worker is pegged at N18,000. This amount, going by some state government, cannot be paid by them due to ‘resources’ available to some of the states of the Federation.
Read the full detail below as reported by LegisReportsNG
The insatiable greed of Nigeria’s federal lawmakers has been raised a notch higher as they have yet again increased their wages and pecks accruable to a mind-blowing 56 million naira and 42 million naira for each Senator and member of the House of Representatives respectively per quarter.
This latest development confirms LegisReports’ earlier exclusive story which reported that members of the House had mounted pressures on their leadership for a roof-top wage increase, rejecting a substantial increment offer from 27million naira to 32 million naira.
Futile Efforts at Subterfuge
LegisReports gathered from impeccable sources that this new increment in both the Senate and the House is being implemented in a manner of subterfuge that will conceal it from the Nigerian public because the payment has been arranged to be paid in instalments to members and under shady sub-heads such that prying eyes within the national assembly system will not easily decode.
But the cover on this certainly unpopular wage increment has now been blown open by our reliable sources who confirmed that part of the ploy is for the lawmakers to continue to openly complain about lack and/or inadequate resources while their bank accounts are being discreetly credited in instalments.
Fattened Lawmakers, Lean Populace
Until this new increment, each senator went home with 40 million naira every quarter while a member of the House received 27 million naira for the same period, an indecent wage in a country where the minimum wage of the average worker is 18 thousand naira per month and where over 70% of the populace live in abject poverty.
In the last dispensation under Speaker Dimeji Bankole (2007-2011), each member of the House of Representatives went home with a princely 40 million naira per quarter (every three months) but the overwhelming uproar which trailed the revelation in the media forced the succeeding House leadership under current Speaker Aminu Tambuwal to review the wage downward to 27 million in 2011.
Breaking the Law- the RMAFC By-pass
To further expose the duplicity and greed of the national assembly members, these mind-boggling wages were neither brought up for the consideration of nor approved by the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), the body statutorily empowered by law to fix salaries and wages for public servants in the country.
Despite the widespread public odium this practice of paying themselves huge allocations from the public purse has brought on the federal lawmakers, this latest increment indicates that the leopard cannot change its skin as far as the senators and house members are concerned on this issue. And in this case like in the past, no effort has been made to put the RMAFC into the picture even if for record purposes.
Highest Paid Public Servants Worldwide
Nigeria’s lawmakers have been established in several comparative analysis in the media to be the highest paid in the world, earning more than even president Barack Obama, the world’s most powerful elected public official. In spite of this huge and worrisome wages, the lawmakers have continued to fail to justify these earnings in the manner they discharge their duties and conduct themselves in public.
By this new development, members of the current House of Representatives have surpassed what their colleagues in Bankole’s house earned per quarter, thereby exposing the bellicose underbelly they had sustained against their leadership which had trumpeted an ambitious legislative agenda in the aftermath of its emergence.
A Confirmation
LegisReports had in that exclusive story reported how the pressures mounted on the Tambuwal leadership of the House had sometimes been taken to a level of blackmail with restive members threatening to scoop up mud against their leaders and some others tacitly supporting past failed impeachment plots against the Speaker, Mr. Tambuwal.
In that report, we also informed of how many of the members who are almost always broke stepped up the pressure on the House leadership when they returned empty-handed from the Christmas and end of year break in January as many of them had lavished their resources during the holidays.
Evasive Spokesmen
When our reporter got through to Hon. Zakari Mohammed, Chairman, House Committee on Media to get official response from him, he denied knowledge of the pay rise. However, he was unwilling to state how much the lawmakers earn as quarterly allowance. When our reporter probed him to disclose how much himself as a member of the House collects quarterly he referred LegisReports to the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, (RMAFC) a body charged with fixing salaries of public appointees for that information. His counterpart in the Senate, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe failed to respond to repeated calls to his phone.
More detail soon....
Source: LegisReportsNG
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