August 18, (THEWILL) – Just when one thinks the story has ended, a new version begins and generates reactions that create a gap in arguments, thereby raising questions which in turn beg for answers. The controversy began a week ago when former President Olusegun Obasanjo accused the National Assembly of engaging in an illegality by fixing their allowances.
In reality, the controversy is old stuff. Nigerians have for some time now been circulating and discussing on social media spaces versions of copies of jumbo salaries and allowances of federal lawmakers. Between August 1 and 10, 2024, organisers of the #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria nationwide protests expanded the discussion by making it one of their demands. As controversies go, the issue acquired a life of its own and was turbo-charged by Obasanjo last weekend during a courtesy visit by six members of the House of Representatives to his residence in Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State.
“With all due respect, you’re not supposed to fix your salaries. But you decide what you pay yourself, the allowances that you give yourself, newspaper allowances. You give yourself all sorts of things, and you know it is not right. It is immoral,” the former President told the visitors, among other things.
“The issue may look old, but it deals with the core national challenges of corruption and accountability,” Ms Ene Obi, Convener of the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room told THEWILL on Friday. Obi, who is a former Country Director of Action Aid Nigeria, said that when issues of due process begin to fly around the National Assembly then there is a big question about the meaning of representative democracy in the country.
She is also a member of a group of five good governance and democracy activists who intervened during the recent nationwide protest by issuing a solemn save-our-country epistle, “Nigeria at a Crossroads.”
The spokesperson of the group and Professor, Jibril Ibrahim made a frontal response to the jumbo pay controversy last weekend. Ibrahim is a political science and development consultant. According to him, in normal parliamentary systems, the earnings of members are public knowledge as they are available on the website of these branches of government. “If our National Assembly has made its earnings a secret, it is because it knows some of the payments its members award themselves are illegal. At a time when the majority of Nigerians are suffering from multi-dimensional poverty and severe hunger, it is shocking that legislators believe they can continue to consume a considerable slice of the national budget,” he said.
DEEPENING CONTROVERSY
Apart from being aided by protesters and Obasanjo, the heated debate has also been sustained in the public domain by the clarification of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission of Nigeria, RMAFC. Twice it intervened last week. First was after Obasanjo and the National Assembly clashed over the jumbo salaries for federal lawmakers.
According to Mohammed Adamu, Chairman of RMAFC, the agency responsible for fixing salaries and allowances of public servants, each member of the Senate collects a total monthly salary and allowances of N1,063,860.00.
Adamu gave the breakdown of the cumulative take-home pay for lawmakers to include a basic salary of N168,866:70; motor vehicle fuelling and maintenance allowance of N126,650; N42,216:66 for personal assistant; domestic staff – N126,650:00; entertainment – N50,660:00; utilities – N50,660; newspapers/periodicals – N25,330:00; wardrobe allowance – N42,216,66:00; house maintenance – N8,443.33 and constituency allowance – N422,166:66.
But the lawmaker representing Kano South Senatorial District in the National Assembly, Abdurrahman Kawu Sumaila, last Thursday contradicted RMAFC boss Adamu during an interview with BBC Hausa Service, during which he said that “each Senator is given N21 million every month as the cost of running his office”.
Sumaila further disclosed that he was speaking about 99 non-principal officers of the Red Chamber, not the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, the Deputy Senate President, Jibrin Barau and eight other principal officers of the upper chamber of the National Assembly, namely, Majority Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele; Deputy Majority Leader, Lola Ashiru; Chief Whip, Tahir Monguno; Deputy Chief Whip, Nwebonyi Peter Onyeka; Minority Leader, Abba Moro; Deputy Minority Leader, Akogun Lere Oyewumi; Minority Whip, Osita Ngwu; and Deputy Minority Whip, Rufai Hanga.
The implication of Senator Sumaila’s disclosure is that 99 Senators minus the principal officers earn a total monthly package of N2.079 billion and N24.948 billion annually.
“This is a drain on taxpayers’ money. That is the only way I can describe what is going on at the National Assembly. If they should be paid at all, it should not be above the salary of a secondary school principal, who by the way is doing a better job,” a founding National Secretary of the Alliance for Democracy and political thinker, Professor Udenta O. Udenta told THEWILL in a brief interview on Friday night.
In a rather lengthy defence and explanation of the point at issue, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Affairs, Yemi Adaramodu, refuted claims that each Senator earned N21 million monthly, saying the running cost is neither salary nor allowance.
“Thus, the money referred to by Senator Kawu Sumaila is neither his salary nor personal allowance,” he said.
Senator Adaramodu maintained that running costs were quite different from the salary and personal allowances of the lawmakers, which he noted has been fixed by the RMAFC.
Adaramodu, who submitted that running costs were not peculiar to the legislature for running of their offices, further clarified that “such funds are retired by relevant officers after being used for official purposes and proof of genuine expenditure. It’s not a personal allowance or salary of the legislator”. He added that such funds were also used for constituency office staff. According to him, running costs and allowances were not peculiar to the National Assembly. All arms of government and their personnel, governors, ministers, permanent secretaries, Directors-General, state Commissioners, even boards and parastatals, including local government councils, run their activities with running costs.
“It’s for the daily running of offices by Senators and other attached statutory officials. It equally provides funds for Constituency office staff. It is also for oversight functions and community engagements,” he said.
Explaining further, Senator Adaramodu said the funds are not static and they are provided for in the annual budget. “Such funds are retired by relevant officers after being used for official purposes and proof of genuine expenditure. It’s not a personal allowance or salary of the legislator.”
He frowned at what he described as a developing narrative of wasteful spending by the parliament and declared: “The Nigerian Senate is an Assembly of accomplished and successful professionals, administrators and captains of industries, who are not driven by these often-touted egregious pecuniary bits, rather for their patriotic zeal in the nation’s quest to breathe life to Nigeria’s political and socio-economic dry bones. The National Assembly receives about 1% of the federal budget and has never exceeded this, even when the non-availability of funds is pervasive.”
Efforts by THEWILL to seek more clarification from the National Assembly spokesperson, Senator Adaramodu and his House or Representatives counterpart, Akin Rotimi on the cut-off date for the allowances, failed to yield positive results. Rep Rotimi’s phone rang without any response.
Senator Shehu Sani who is among the first set of federal lawmakers to disclose the allowances received by members of the National Assembly, (though he received N13.5 million as at the time he served in March 2018), agrees with Adaramodu. The secrecy around the extra monies available to the senior lawmakers has continued to make the public ask questions which border on transparency and accountability by their elected representatives.
Responding to the development of events, Ms Ene said the fact that members of the Senate are contradicting themselves shows that things are not right with the lawmakers.
She noted, “If you trace the history of budget padding by our parliamentarians, you will see that these whole arguments are not for the benefit of Nigerians but for the benefit of the parliamentarians. Remember that Senator Abdul Ningi, Bauchi Central in June this year alleged that the 2024 budget was padded by N3 trillion and for that he was suspended. No investigation of Ningi’s allegation was made, not even after he was recalled.”
CORRUPTION INVESTIGATION BY ICPC
Coupled with this lack of self-examination is the institutional query on the rectitude of the National Assembly by an anti-corruption agency. In an April 2022 report, the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, ICPC, detailed how members diverted funds for constituency projects.
The ICPC alleged that senators diverted money meant for their senatorial districts to non-existing projects, thereby denying their constituents from reaping dividends of democracy.
The anti-graft agency said it uncovered how the National Assembly illegally added N20 billion to N100 billion annual constituency projects.
In the report titled, ‘Interim Constituency and Executive Projects Tracking Report’, the ICPC showed how members “embedded additional projects into the 2021 mandate budget of MDAs, which, in a long way, affected budget performance, as well as distorted developmental planning and implementation of the 2021 fiscal year.”
The agency discovered other breaches where lawmakers awarded bogus contracts to themselves, duplicated projects totalling N20 billion in Taraba State, awarded 686 water pump supply contracts to companies owned by children of a lawmaker in Kebbi. Similarly, a project valued at N149m for the training and empowerment of women and youths in Abaji, FCT was awarded to a relative of the sponsoring legislator. So did it also happen in Katsina where the sponsor single-handedly executed the contract valued at N49m. It was changed from its form and devalued by the lawmaker. In another case, the supply of tricycles to Rivers State was an empowerment project
The report concluded: “Budget insertion remains one of the egregious, yet illegally acceptable phenomena that has distorted the nation’s developmental planning and implementation of developmental programmes.
“In addition to the N100 billion appropriated annually for constituency projects, the National Assembly embedded additional projects into mandated budgets of MDAs. This is done to increase the project portfolios of concerned legislators and their influence on MDAs. The value of the insertion was in billions.”
At other times, the problem was about projects cited on personal properties, which technically vests legal possession and ownership to the sponsor. An example was cited of the diversion of funds for an agricultural empowerment project in Osun State to a training programme on cattle rearing and the actual supply of cattle.
The Bill of Quantities, BOQ, according to the ICPC report, indicated procurement and distribution of 250 cattle to beneficiaries.
Spokesperson for one of the committees that organised the #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria protest, Taiwo Hassan told THEWILL, questionable dealings which negatively impact the citizenry was the reason protesters demanded the drastic cut in the cost of governance in Nigeria.
“From what has been said about the jumbo pay, it shows that the National Assembly is not acting alone. It is not a revenue generating arm of government. It is part of the flamboyant expenses like security votes, spending huge sums on renovation of quarters for elected officials even in the face of poverty and hardship in the country.”
WAY FORWARD
Prof Udenta O. Udenta suggests two ways out of the issue. He said because he considers the National Assembly a big drain on taxpayers money, it should be merged into a unicameral parliament, instead of its current structure. Secondly, the job of members should be part-time.
Hassan said, “What this whole thing means for me is to have a total overhaul in government. For example, we have the Freedom of Information Act, yet citizens cannot demand accountability of appointed and elected officials.”
Amos Esele is the Acting Editor of THEWILL Newspaper. He has over two decades of experience on the job.
