The
widespread anger which greeted the reported outrageous allocations for
wardrobe allowances for members of the National Assembly earlier this
week is quite understandable, and obviously inevitable.
From
what we heard, as from next week, every member of the House of
Representatives, some of who have no idea what they will be doing and
will not recover from that ignorance anytime during their four-year
term, will have the sum of N1.4m to expend on clothes and accessories
with which they will dazzle the taxpayers who pay them monthly. His more
fortunate and privileged counterpart in the Senate will have a more
handsome sum of 1.7m in the same 30-day period to maintain his wardrobe!
That
sum, which does not include an assortment of other allowances, will pay
the minimum wage of 81 other Nigerians. Only that unlike the legislator
who sits three times in a week but hides under all sorts of committee
engagements to convince us that he is busy, these 81 people work very
hard, five days of the week just to fend for themselves and their
families and pay the salaries of men and women who were sent to Abuja,
Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory, to represent the people’s interest.
But it gets more pathetic. While millions of people who earn a
minimum wage of N18, 000(far less than $100) and hundreds of thousands
of others who retired after serving the nation for an average of 35
years are being owed salaries and pensions for periods ranging from
between five and 10 months, the princes and princesses that we just
elected to talk, or even fight and throw chairs in the chambers for us,
must get their indulgences before the legislative houses resume.
Nothing
depicts the lopsidedness of the Nigerian situation as aptly as this: He
who is called to serve is now being serviced. Members of the political
class in Nigeria feed so fat on the larger percentage of the people that
they have become indolent and uncaring. This is more so for the
legislature which fails to be the true representatives of the people by
pandering to filthy lucre or the dictates of a patron.
Now and
again in this column, I have registered my disappointment with the
National Assembly, obviously, the largest assemblage of overpaid and
underperforming men and women anywhere in the world. In a recent piece
entitled, “The failure staring APC in the face,” I ventilated the
opinion that the National Assembly is the most important arm of
government and that a lot of the inefficiencies including corruption
that we see in the polity result from the inaction or collaboration of
the legislature.
But the National Assembly apparently has the
idea that it is best to use its powers to milk Nigeria dry without much
consideration for the fact that well over 100 million Nigerians are
unable to afford more than one meal in a day.
Nigerian are
therefore justifiably horrified and outraged by the news of the reckless
national expenditure on the humongous salaries and allowances of the
members of the National Assembly.
An investigative report
indicated that aside from the speculated wardrobe allowances (which was
not part of the paper’s investigation), each representative will get
another N14.5m in lieu of accommodation, vehicle and furniture while
each senator is entitled to the sum of N16.5m. All of this, in my
opinion, amounts to an assault catalysts for the widespread exclamation
of poverty and lack of opportunity in the land.
While civil
servants are unpaid with all its attendant chain effects on people in
many of our states, it is scandalous that the perks of office of one
legislator are huge enough to feed a small village when all are added
together.
This will also account for the desperation with which
people gun for political offices in Nigeria. Given the considerable
remuneration of political office holders, a number of our people now
consider politics as a profession and are willing to do anything to
attain such ambitions.
We will however miss this point to
imagine that this extravagance is limited to the National Assembly. The
truth is that other categories of public office holders earn enough to
compete with entrepreneurs and investors except that the former bring
nothing to the table. This is evident in the fact that the excuse of
many governors for owing several months of salary arrears to civil
servants and gratuities to pensioners is the drop in federal allocation.
Sixteen years after return to civil rule, a majority of our states have
no creative ideas on how to reposition their economies from their
rent-seeking nature to a productive one. Yet, the drop in federal
allocation does not stop them from flying private jets and playing Santa
Claus all year round.
Having said all of this however, one
should borrow from the Yoruba expression that even when one is crying,
one should see clearly. I should clarify that in spite of the
justification of the disgust of Nigerians at the earnings of
legislators, which they have hidden from public glare over the years,
politicians do not fix their salaries and allowances.
The
responsibility for this is given to the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation
and Fiscal Commission which was created by paragraph 32 of Part I of the
Third Schedule to the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of
Nigeria. Sections 84 and 125 of the constitution specifically empower
the RMAFC to determine the remuneration of political office holders
emphasising that neither the National Assembly nor the state Houses of
Assembly can go beyond what the commission recommends.
While
venting our anger on politicians, we will also need to request that the
RMAFC presents to Nigerians the parameters it uses in prescribing these
humongous allowances especially at this very austere period when the
country is manifestly poor, broke and almost bankrupt. When the revenue
has continued to dwindle as a result of the single product economy that
we have and when hopes for an improvement seem far away. This is not to
talk about the $60bn local and external debts and the N2.4trn with which
we have serviced those debts in the past four years. How does this
commission justify this dangerous and unsustainable benevolence in the
face of the lack that the majority faces?
President Muhammadu
Buhari who, along with the All Progressives Congress (whose members have
also benefited from this criminal wage for years) promised that things
would change in Nigeria must move fast to end this rape of the people
and restore sanity to the country before it explodes. No serious nation,
intent on sustainable development, spends the bulk of its public
finances to maintain the prodigious taste of the upper echelons in
government.
Buhari’s anti- corruption and frugal mantra will
remain mere ideological expressions without blocking all the leakages
which deplete our resources and make politics look like the only
business for which living could be pleasant in Nigeria.
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