On the Excessive Honorariums for Lawmakers

For the first time in decades, the leadership of the National Assembly disclosed the honorariums of members of the National Assembly(NASS). During the 2021 Distinguished Parliamentarians’ Lecture facilitated by the National Institute of Legislative and Democratic Studies, Abuja, the Senate President, Dr Ahmad Lawan said NASS members were being paid N17 billion yearly. According to him, the yearly running cost for a senator was N13 million per year; while a member of the House of Representatives gets N8 million. Thus, a senator is paid N52 million as running cost per year and a representative takes home N32 million. For the 109 senators and 360 representatives they get N5.6 billion and N11.5 billion respectively. As salary a senator earns N1.5 million per year while a representative gets N1.3 million per annum. This honorarium scale is excessive in a country that is living on loans, a country that is owing pensions at local, state and federal levels. Moreover our educational system is in shambles due to the fact that she cannot honour its obligations to tertiary institutions nor pay her brainbox, the Academic Staff Union of Universities. This high running cost occasioned by huge allocation to legislative houses is self induced. This outrageous allocation to the legislature cannot be justified knowing fully well that the minimum wage payable in Nigeria is N30,000. Worse still, many states of the federation cannot pay the minimum wage. Moreover, legislators don’t have to pay their aides personally. It is an abuse of the separation of powers for legislators to takeover the functions of the executive branch. Where did they get these examples from. It is against the run of play for legislators to abandon the norms of the separation of powers because of petty financial gains. In order to cut Nigeria’s high cost of governance we advice that we go back to paying our legislators part-time as was the practice in the First Republic. It is the principal officers of NASS that get full pay. Moreover, in the financial exigency we are where debt servicing takes 62 percent of our annual budget we cannot afford continuing with our bicameral legislature at the centre. In the First Republic we ran bicameral legislatures in local, regional and federal levels. In the current dispensation, we jettisoned the houses of chiefs in the local and states, there was no justification for us to retain the house of Representatives and the senate at the centre. We need only one as in South Africa. With 21 senators from the North West, let every geopolitical zone/region have 21 senators and scrap the House of Representatives. After all we are not observing the equality of population required for membership of the House of Representatives. Every zone is lying about its true population. Even then, we need full disclosure as regards the true honorarium accruable to legislators. Insincerity has become ingrained in us Christian and Muslim in which case false information has become the norm. There is insincerity everywhere in Nigeria. The executive promised restructuring. This was amplified by Governor Nasir El Rufai Panel, yet 18 months to go, nothing like that is in the offing. Insincerity is undermining our efforts at realizing our dream of a great Nigerian nation leading the African Union and standing behind NATO, China and Russia in a quartet of world powers. At this juncture, we call on the Wages and Salaries Commission and the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission to begin a review of emoluments to various cadre of workers in Nigeria in accordance with their relevance to the current needs of the nation. We cannot be insincere to others without being insincere to ourselves. The excessive honorariums being paid to legislators should be reviewed immediately.