Once again, former President Olusegun Obasanjo (Obj), has visibly shown his disgust for the disposition of the nation’s legislators especially those at the federal level. The week before, Obasanjo told a team of six legislators who visited him in Abeokuta, Ogun State that many individuals currently holding public office lack the necessary character to lead the nation adding that some of them in the national assembly ought to be behind bars or even face the gallows. Exactly 10 years ago, the former president had alleged that the national assembly was ‘a den of corruption occupied by a group of unarmed robbers.’
With the level of information that a former president can garner, it is probably time for the nation to begin to interrogate the rationale for the damaging comments Obasanjo keeps making about our lawmakers.Unfortunately, responses to the criticism from both the national assembly and some Nigerians who appear to have an axe to grind with Obj, cannot help the legislators. It would be so for as long as our lawmakers think they are smarter than the average citizen concerning their alleged bogus remuneration. In the case of the current Senate, all that Yemi Adaramodu its spokesperson did was to repeat denials of the allegations as his predecessors did many times in the past.
Of course, to describe Obj’s criticism as satanic takes nothing away from its veracity. As for one traditional ruler who sought to blackmail the author’s message as hypocritical, there is need to make the point that most citizens are convinced that the allegations are true.As bad as people such as an Oyo Monarch, Oba Francis Alao may have felt about Obj’s criticism of our legislators, it was not the former president that equated the greed of our law makers to one quarter of the nation’s budget. Instead, it was Sanusi Lamido Sanusi former governor of the CBN, now the 16th Emir of Kano that worked out the calculation. The then CBN governor spoke as far back as 2010 while delivering the convocation lecture of the Igbinedion University Okada.
When summoned by the Senate to apologise for supposedly accusing the legislature falsely,Sanusi insisted that he got his figures from the budget adding that he had a duty to draw attention to developments that could derail Nigeria’s economy. Big pity, not many followed up with the criticism when it was first made over a decade ago.On two other occasions, a few strong voices attacked the national assembly on same ground of its ‘jumbo’ pay. One of them was renowned legal guru, Professor Itse Sagay who raised the alarm that the remuneration package of the average federal legislator in Nigeria surpassed that of the American President.
Sagay revealed a detailed package of our lawmakers’ numerous allowances on such headings as Hardship, Constituency, Furniture, Newspapers, Wardrobe, Recess, Accommodation, Utilities, Domestic staff, Entertainment, Vehicle maintenance, Leave, and Severance gratuity etc.The controversy was still fresh when President Goodluck Jonathan’s government invited Richard Dowden, Director of the Royal African Society in the UK to deliver the year’s Independence Day celebration lecture. Jonathan, his vice, one past president, cabinet ministers, legislators, ambassadors and the media heard Dowden say that Nigerian lawmakers were the highest paid in the world notwithstanding that their country had no less than 100 million people living in poverty.
At the end of the lecture, it became obvious that criticisms against the jumbo pay of our legislators was not only local, the international community was also fully aware of it. Indeed, last Thursday, Beroro Efekoro, a Nigerian-born US legislator representing Albany County in the 7th district of New York described the salaries and allowances of Nigerian legislators as outrageous. It is therefore important for Nigerians to quickly change their approach of supporting the practice of sweeping dirty reports under the carpet. Rather than chastising the messenger, it is more in the interest of governance and society to assess the message and ascertain its probative value.
The greater pain to me is that Oba Francis Alao said he agreed with Obasanjo on the subject but was unhappy with the former president for pretending to be a saint. He wanted Obasanjo whom he felt was similarly corrupt to volunteer to be probed. But how could such a viewpoint exonerate the legislators from among those hurting our economy? After all, Obasanjo did not exclude himself or other Nigerians from guilt; he probably chose to focus on the institution of his immediate target group – the visiting legislators. Otherwise, it would have been annoying if the former president had failed to indict traditional rulers some of whom had been dethroned in some states for sponsoring banditry.
Anyone who is convinced that the indictment of our federal legislators is unjust is free to defend them by presenting verifiable evidence to persuade the rest of us to share his standpoint. If not, it is unfair that some Nigerians especially the privileged elders always dissuade critics from calling out top office holders in the country. Painfully, such so called elders are influenced by material benefits to support the approach of business as usual to governance.For the rest of us it is extremely difficult to accept the continuing deceit of the people by our legislators. There are at least three important Nigerians, themselves legislators who have at one time or the other made it hard for us to be convinced to the contrary.
To start with, two of thelegislators have come out openly to confirm that the public perception of a jumbo pay to the average legislator is correct. One of them is the reputable activist and former Senator Shehu Sani who represented Kaduna Central during the 8th Assembly. Sani confirmed that he received a remuneration of N13million which was reportedly credited to his account every month. Even after Sani had shown such remorse because he was ‘pricked by his conscience as an activist to do so, his colleagues are still busy disseminating falsehood. Surprisingly, only last week, asecond legislator, Kawu Ismaila (kano south) who had to meet a moral duty of letting taxpayers and Nigerians in general know the correct take-home pay of senators established that Sani’s figure has since moved to N21million during the current 10th Senate.
The question as to why only a few members have had the courage to disclose their actual remuneration needs not be asked because it is an open secret that any member who discloses any unpalatable information about the national assembly stood a chance of facing huge punishment. In 2016, the House of Representatives unanimously suspended Abdulmumuni Jibrin, a law maker from Kano state for as long as 180 legislative days for telling the nation about budget padding in the House. Jubril according to the verdict of the House was also banned from holding any position of responsibility for the span of that House.Considering that Jibrin was the chairman of the House Committee on Appropriation and thus best positioned to discover budget padding, he was silenced after a kangaroo trial.
Does anyone expect Nigerians to disbelieve the two senators who have come out to disclose their own take-home pay? That is not likely to happen because even reactions by other senators have neither been uniform nor credible. For example, in 2017, Aliyu Sabi-Abdullahi, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs had presented what looked solid as a defence by rebutting the rumour of a jumbo pay and asking any interested Nigerian to verify from the relevant authority, the Revenue and Mobilization Fiscal Allocation Commission RMAFC. Almost immediately, the International Centre for Investigative Reporting ICIR which visited the website of the RMAFC reportedly found the relevant section on ‘remuneration package’ to be empty.
It is noteworthy that RMAFC has since become more of a partisan group than a societal institution concerned about sustainable development. Before now, the posture of the commission was to distance itself from the controversy of the self-made legislators’ jumbo allowances. At a point, it announced a few thousands of naira as allowances but later said nothing when the allowances became a scandal. However,the recent denial of Shehu Sani’s figureby RMAFC’s current chairman has put the commission at the centre of the controversy. Now that a serving senator has validated Sani’s revelation, has the RMAFC not become an integral part of what ‘Igodomigodo’ would call odoriferous saga?
Tonnie Iredia,
Former DG, NTA
