FENRAD calls for review of earnings of federal lawmakers
Stephen Ukandu, Umuahia
Civil Society Organization, Foundation For Environmental Rights, Advocacy & Development (FENRAD), has called for urgent review of the earnings of federal lawmakers.
The call is coming in the wake of the recent claim and counter claims that a Senator goes home with N21 million as monthly allowances.
Executive Director of FENRAD, Comrade Nnanna Nwafor, in a statement, said the review of the legislators’ allowances had become necessary because Nigeria’s current economic situation could no longer support such a humongous pay.
The statement read in part:”For a country whose budgetary deficits kept increasing with debt servicing gulping almost 100% of the revenue until recently, this is not just unsustainable but gross fiscal recklessness.
” Nigeria’s fiscal environment does not gain anything with this present system of payment. Before now, a former senator representing Kaduna Central, Sen. Sani Shehu, revealed that in his time, a federal lawmaker in the Senate earned a little over ₦13 million monthly, while former representative Sergius Ogun had revealed that he earned ₦8 million monthly as a member of the f House of Representatives on national television.
“While there are discrepancies regarding what a federal lawmaker earns in Nigeria, adjusting to meet the current state of affairs is key, and in line with the push for cost of governance reduction.”
FENRAD said it beats the imagination that lawmakers get fat allowances in a poverty-infested country where workers hardly received N30,000 as minimum wage.
“This is unnecessary in a country with 133 million people facing multidimensional poverty, 20 million children out of school, people dying of treatable diseases like cholera (and monkey pox recently).
“Even though no lawmaker should by right not earn beggarly sum, there is no justification whatsoever for certain allowances and appurtenances that our lawmakers enjoy today.
“For example, allowances like hardship allowance and severance pay, which is 300% of the basic salary, paid to members not returning to the parliament is meaningless. Also unnecessary is recess allowance (holiday allowance or “tokens”).
“The irony is that the National Assembly is required to meet at least not less than 181 days yearly. The 2021 Senate met only 66 times (66 plenaries) and still earned all their payments. Why? This is a huge insult to the average Nigerian worker who works 5/7 or 6/7 days weekly, putting in more hours and effort monthly while they hardly receive ₦30,000 minimum wage implemented since 2019.”
FENRAD equally supported the call for part-time legislature, arguing that Nigeria lawmakers are already working part time but ironically earning full time over bloated wage.
It also demanded that the National Assembly should subject its accounts to public scrutiny.
