New salary structure for lawmakers

It is no longer news that Nigeria runs the most expensive legislature in the world, with opulence and flamboyant lifestyle increasingly assuming definitive attributes of the 109 members of the Senate and 360 members of the House of Representatives.

Indeed, electoral victory into any of the two ‘hallowed’ chambers of the National Assembly has been identified as the surest means to instant wealth in the country today and it all starts with breath-choking and mind-boggling salaries and allowances for wardrobe and furniture.

Exactly how much each senator of the Federal Republic goes home with every month is still a matter of conjecture, but it is speculated to be well over N1 million, besides numerous allowances which are about 50 times more than the basic salary, all in the same country where minimum wage for a civil servant is just N18,000!

Times are hard now and both the country and its citizens find themselves in desperate situations, leading to self-call to introspection and sober reflection on whence they came as individuals and as a country otherwise well endowed for greatness.

The free-fall in the crude oil price and the squandermania of yesterday have left the country prostrate and, therefore, incapable of sustaining the predatory and parasitic lifestyle of a few.

The call for the slashing of the lawmakers’ salaries has been strident across the country and we join in this call, not only because their jumbo pay is not in tune with present realities, but chiefly because we believe that ours is not a jungle where the weak suffer and die so that the strong can live and enjoy.

We see it as an unfortunate development in this country that those who seek election into public office usually go with warped mindset that they are making investment, which is why when elections are contested and won, there is unholy desperation by such winners to ‘recoup’ their investment.

This, perhaps, explains the lawmakers’ initial resistance to the move by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) to review their salaries, but Nigerians are insisting that there should be no going back on this downward review.

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) earlier this year kicked against the lawmakers’ jumbo pay, calling for considerable cut. Recently, civil society organization members protested and also demanded that legislative business should be on a part-time basis in view of the high cost of maintaining the National Assembly and frequent recess embarked upon by the lawmakers. We agree completely with this.

It beats the imagination that these lawmakers don’t seem to  appreciate the mood of the nation which calls for leadership sacrifices, resource allocation for national development and common good as opposed to self-help, which is why we see the reduction of their annual budget from N150 billion to N120 billion as insensitive and self-serving.

It is alarming that whereas Osun State with over 3 million people is struggling with an unfunded 2015 Appropriation Bill of N201 billion, making it unable to pay workers’ salaries for seven months, less than 500 national legislators are swimming in N120 billion annual budget.

It becomes all the more painful knowing that, in terms of per capita income, Kano State with a population of  9,383,682 budgeted N210 billion in 2015, giving an estimated per capita income of about N22,379, while the National Assembly’s per capita income, on the basis of its N120 million budget, is estimated at N293,398,533.

This, to us, is gross injustice and only portrays the illegal and unconstitutional concentration of scarce national resources in the hands of legislators and executive office holders who live ostentatiously at the expense of the rest of the citizens.

We, therefore, unequivocally support the idea of new salaries for the ‘distinguished’ senators and ‘honourable’ members of the House, and the new salaries must come down by as much as 50 percent to truly reflect the present mood of the nation’s economy.

This should be taken as a short-term measure. In the long term, we are of the opinion that legislative function should be made part-time, more so when the legislators are frequently on recess, meaning that the work they do can be effectively done in not more than six months in a year and from the comfort of their homes.