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By Owei Lakemfa

I met a former Member of the House of Representatives about five weeks ago. He had established a huge institution with sprawling structures. He said as an Honourable he found himself receiving N7 million monthly.  He quickly decided to establish the institution. So, monthly, he went to his home town and poured the funds into the project. By the time his tenure came to an end, he had all that was necessary, in place.

The Honourable’s revelation was a well guarded secret as Nigerians are not supposed to know the income of their representatives in the National Assembly, NASS. This may be so because the figures are subversive of good governance.

However, his narration fitted into the revelation in March 2018 by Senator Shehu Sani that each Senator was being paid a monthly salary of N750,000 with allowances totaling N13.5 million.  It meant that the then monthly package of each Distinguished Senator of the Federal Republic was N14.25 million monthly.

That was about $40,00 monthly or  some $480,000 per annum. In comparison, Senators of the United States, the richest and most powerful country on earth, were each earning $174,000 per annum.

There was uproar. Senator Sani was criticised by his colleagues not because he told a lie against them. Rather, the issue was that he revealed a tightly guarded secret that could lead to incitement.

This revelation led to three suits being filed. Justice  Chuka Obiozor of the Federal High Court in consolidating the suits, on June 4, 2021 ruled that the remuneration was illegal as the NASS has no power whatsoever to fix its salaries and allowances. He ordered a downward review of the legislators’ income.

It was assumed that the law makers would obey the constitution, the laws of the land and the court judgment.

However, in the last one month, former President Olusegun Obasanjo revealed that the NASS was still fixing its own emoluments and paying itself bogus allowances.

The Senate came after Obasanjo, guns blazing. It characterised his accusation as: “uncharitable and satanic.”

The Red Chamber Spokesman, Senator Yemi Adaramodu,  Ekiti South, accused the former President  of attempting to: “crucify the legislature by the centurions of political hypocrisy.” I am still in search of the Distinguished to explain if this is English language, a literary translation of Ekiti dialect, or parliamentary privilege that grants him immunity to fire nuclear-guided grammatical missiles from the sanctuary of the hallowed chambers.

Then Senator Sani threw a bombshell; rather than reduce their emoluments as ordered by the courts three years ago, the Distinguished Senators of the Federal Republic had actually ballooned them from  N14.5 million to N21 million monthly!

He was presented as  a blatant liar by no less a dignitary than the Chairman of the  Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, RMAFC, Mohammed .B. Shehu, a recipient of the   Order of the Federal Republic, OFR, the third highest national honour in the country.  He is indeed, the highest authority in the land on the salaries and emoluments of public office holders as he presides over the agency responsible for the revenues accruing to and disbursement of such funds from the Federal Account.

The Chairman claimed that: “ each Senator collects a monthly salary and allowances of the sum of N1,063,860:00…” He then mumbled that: “some allowances are regular while others are non-regular.” That is not the issue, rather, it  is what are the monthly emoluments paid a Nigerian Senator?

So, do  we believe this RMAFC Chairman or serving Senator Sumaila Kawu, Kano South,  who on August 14, 2024  responded on  BBC radio: “My monthly salary is less than N1 million (but) in the Senate, each Senator gets N21 million every month as running cost.”

Does the Commission Chairman expect anybody to believe him that the total monthly entitlement accrue able to  a Senator is N1,063,860 when we are all witnesses to the fact that each legislator was allocated a Toyota SUV with a minimum N130 million price tag?

If all a Senator takes  is a monthly N22 million, the cries from the public might not have been so strident. But the truth is that the legislators take far more than that from the national purse. For instance, the NASS annually pads the national budget.

Then President Muhammadu Buhari accused the National Assembly of padding the 2018 Budget by introducing 6,403 projects of their own amounting to N578 billion. He also claimed legislators smuggled 6,576 new projects into the 2022 Budget.

When Senator Abdul Ningi of PDP Bauchi, claimed  the  NASS padded the 2024 Budget by N3.7 trillion or over 10 per cent of the N28.78 trillion budget, he was hounded out of the Senate and suspended on March 12, 2024.  He was recalled after ten weeks based on pleadings that he had learnt his lessons.

Also, legislators were allocated constituency projects with some individuals netting billions of Naira. The process is so opaque that until now, the precise amount allocated each constituency, has not been made public.

The question is, must democracy be so costly that we virtually have to empty the Central Bank  to pay the emoluments of political office holders?

If the basic duties of the NASS are law making, representation and oversight, is that arm of government not overpriced? Doubtlessly, if we scrap either the Senate or the House of Representatives, the quality of legislation we are getting will not reduce.

But does high cost translate to quality service? A comparison between the Cuban Senate and the Nigerian Senate puts a lie to this.  Senators in the former do not get paid for their legislative work which is considered as patriotic service to the country. If a Cuban Senator wants to research a matter, he asks to the university to do it for him. Yet, the quality of legislative work by the Cubans is not inferior to that of the Nigerians.

So, while the Cuban is freely voted for, the Nigerian Senator virtually pays the electorate to vote for him. The amount of funds available to the Nigerian parliamentarian is so much that in many cases, mini wars are waged to get elected.

The legal and ‘cornered’ funds flowing freely in the NASS, may also be why governors find it one of the best places to retire after their tenure in office.

We cannot continue like this without endangering the democratic project and instigating the populace to insurrection.

The immediate step the NASS can take is to reduce parliamentarian emoluments and allowances to legal and constitutional levels.  The second, is to stop corruption-inducing programmes like ‘constituency projects’ and the tradition of budget padding which to me, is a crime. By the way, who says parliament should not be part-time as it is in practice? The ‘Ayes’ have it!