EDITORIAL: Why federal lawmakers don’t deserve upward pay review

Members of Nigeria’s National Assembly will soon earn bigger emoluments. This is part of a broader upward review of the salaries and allowances of public office holders, orchestrated by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC). The agency is the body statutorily saddled with the task.

The salaries of the president, vice-president, governors and their deputies, ministers, commissioners and other political appointees will be covered by this upward review, which the Chairman of RMAFC, Mohammed Shehu, said is long overdue. This may have been predicated on the national minimum wage of ₦70,000 that came into effect last year, and its consequential adjustment in the salaries of other workers, alongside the inflationary spiral that has devalued the naira.

However, we are deeply concerned about the pay raise being contemplated for federal legislators against the backdrop of their already humongous monthly emoluments, which remain guarded secrets, even though claims around the amounts involved are highly disturbing. Their underwhelming performance makes any hike odious, reckless and unacceptable.

Way back in 2013, The Economist, an influential London-based newspaper, ranked the Nigerian lawmaker, with an average annual earning of $189,500 (about N30 million), as the second highest paid in the world, when compared with the emolument of legislators in 29 countries, including global economic leaders. The figure is second only to Australia’s, and it is exclusive of other “jumbo allowances.” Despite several economic headwinds that have ravaged Nigeria, there has never been any attempt to address this paradox.

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The Senate has passed 96 bills in two years, out of 844 before it, says its President, Godswill Akpabio. This is a poor scorecard. Even more galling is its stewardship in exercising its oversight function. The Senate, for instance, had resolved to investigate the ₦30 trillion “Ways and Means loans” scandal on 20 February 2024, which the Muhammadu Buhari administration had secretly secured from the Central Bank of Nigeria. An ad hoc committee set up for this purpose is yet to present a report on how the funds were used, one year later. The time frame for this ought not to be limitless.

Negligence of duty could explain why this staggering amount was injected into the economy through the back door, without the scrutiny of the Ninth Legislative Assembly. Again, the inertia of the Senate’s 10-member committee set up to probe the state of the moribund Ajaokuta Steel Company and National Ore Mining Company, even with the $498 million paid to contractors since 2008, further underscores their ineptitude in legislative work.

It is sad that the Senate Public Accounts Committee’s efforts to get the NNPC to answer queries on the ₦210 trillion unaccounted for, covering 2017 to 2023, are about to follow the same slippery slope. It involves a ₦103 trillion expenditure and ₦107 trillion in receivables, which the external auditors flagged, and it formed part of the queries of the Auditor-General of the Federation (AGF).

As it is in the Senate, so is it in the House of Representatives, in terms of oversight laxity. Instructively, oversight is the most critical part of the functions of the parliament, carried out by its standing committees to ensure that all agencies of government operate within the framework of transparency and accountability. But this has not been the case. Most financial and civil service regulations are flouted recklessly, as accountability mechanisms simply do not function. The consequence of this is the looting of public funds.

Indolence is writ large in the four senators and 48 members of the House of Representatives who have not contributed to debates during sessions, sponsored bills or presented petitions in the last year. This unfortunate characterisation is highlighted in the Deliberative Barometer Policy-Focus Productivity Report, covering June 2023 and June 2024, released last week.

If the allowances of legislators are a guarded secret, as it has been the practice since 1999, this points to something amiss. Two senators, Shehu Sani and Sumaila Kawu, let the cat out of the bag in 2018 and 2024, respectively, which did not sit well with their colleagues.

Each senator, according to Mr Sani, collected ₦13.5 million monthly emoluments. A BBC report then declared the amount as equivalent to $37,500 or £27,500. “It pricked my conscience and I decided to burst the bubble and open the National Assembly to public scrutiny,” Shehu Sani told the BBC in an interview. In the present 10th National Assembly, the amount has been increased to ₦21 million monthly, which Mr Kawu exposed in August 2024. A member of the House reportedly collects ₦15 million monthly.

Therefore, to increase their salaries and allowances now will give them the carte blanche to seek an enhancement of the ₦21 million and ₦15 million received monthly, amid the massive poverty and hunger in the land. Their unwritten code appears to be: “collapse” all funds due them and pay, even when the presentation of a receipt or evidence of service rendered is required before some of the payments can be made.

There are 469 lawmakers involved, comprising 109 senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives. The RMAFC monthly prepared remuneration of a senator is ₦2,026,400.

Undoubtedly, Nigerian lawmakers are living large, far beyond what they are legally entitled to. While the RMAFC provides a car loan of ₦8.1 million for each senator, they spurned this and budgeted ₦57.6 billion, with which a Toyota Land Cruiser SUV was procured for each senator, and a Toyota Prado SUV for each member of the House of Representatives in November 2023. Each of the SUVs cost at least ₦160 million then.

In August 2024, the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, announced on the floor of the chamber that, “In order to enable us enjoy our holidays, a token has been sent to our various accounts by the Clerk of the National Assembly.” That “token” was ₦2 million, whereas RMAFC’s legitimate provision is ₦248,424 for the recess allowance. It is quite unnerving that the ₦2 million gifted as a holiday token is actually a professor’s salary for four months.

More insights into the over-reach of legislators are evident in the funds budgeted for their constituency projects. The disproportionate sharing of money forced Senator Jarigbe Agom-Jarigbe to squeal last year that ranking senators had their projects funded up to ₦500 million, while others got far less for their own projects. However, a ranking senator, Enyinnaya Abaribe, claimed to have his projects funded up to the tune of only ₦266 million.

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The RMAFC may have whetted the lawmakers’ appetite for more money with its proposal, but the plot precedes this 10th Assembly. While Oniofiok Luke, in the House of Representatives, moved a motion for the salaries of judicial officers to be reviewed in 2022, the Deputy Speaker, Idris Wase, sought an amendment to it for the inclusion of public office holders. The current presidential Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, had presided over that deliberation as the speaker.

In the 2025 budget, BudgetIT has uncovered the insertion of 11,122 projects by federal lawmakers for which ₦6.9 trillion was set aside to take care of, in a total appropriation with a deficit of over ₦13.08 trillion. These are projects claimed to be largely executed by cronies of legislators or their shell companies, without following laid-down public procurement guidelines.

These abuses and rascality must not continue. The business of lawmaking is a public duty, not for self-aggrandising and inconsiderate cohorts. The job should be for the patriotic and citizens with ideas on how to make the country better, and not for leeches to continue profiteering from the public purse.