– Nigerians angry at former public servants drawing their pensions and earning new salaries in parliament at the same time
By Rafiu Ajakaye
LAGOS, Nigeria – Anger is mounting in Nigeria over what citizens are calling excessive and inappropriate pay for their federal lawmakers, focusing specifically on the issue of former public servants drawing their pensions and earning new salaries in parliament at the same time.
At least 16 of Nigeria’s former state governors, all of them drawing huge pension from their states, are currently serving in the country’s 109-member senate.
Other retired public servants who are also pensioners in the lawmaking house are also being paid salaries and allowances as lawmakers.
“Since they are collecting pensions as former governors, or public servants, these senators, including the Senate President, cannot collect another salary. You cannot collect a pension while you are on a salary at the same time,” leading constitutional lawyer Femi Falana told Anadolu Agency in a telephone interview.
“All the former governors in the Senate are not entitled to any salary, maybe sitting allowance, but definitely not salary. That is the law.”
The senior lawyer said a campaign has begun to stop the practice.
If the campaign succeeds, it may well affect the country’s incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari, who is himself a former military head of state and pensioner.
The $603m yearly budget for the Nigerian parliament, reportedly the highest in the world, has drawn criticism from the citizens of a nation where the minimum wage is only around $90 — a Nigerian senator earns around $1.7m annually.
BudgIT, an online-based civic group campaigning for transparency in government finances, has launched a petition calling on the parliament to open its book for public scrutiny.
Stanley Achonu, a leading member of the activist group, denounced the secrecy around the lawmakers’ budget and the exact amount they earn as through their salaries or allowances.
“Lawyers are clearly divided, but we believe that it is morally wrong for former governors, who awarded themselves huge pensions through their State Houses of Assembly, to simultaneously draw salaries from the National Assembly,” Achonu told Anadolu Agency on Saturday.
“More so at a time when most of the states they have left behind are bearing significant debt burdens and the Nigerian economy as a whole is struggling with the unfavorable dynamics of the crude oil markets as well as the costs of insurgency and funding infrastructure back home.
“It is advisable that these individuals should give up one or the other; either forfeit their pensions for the period they serve in the National Assembly or decline to take a lawmaker’s salary and live off their pensions.
“Even President Muhammadu Buhari cannot draw his military pension as well as his salary as President at the same time, so we are of the opinion that these Ex-Governors should likewise come forward and formally as for the discontinuation of one stream of income of their choosing.
“Details of the disbursement, spending, performance and auditing of the funds accruing to the National Assembly remain shrouded in secrecy and inaccessible by the taxpayers whose funds are being utilized.
“The country is facing austere times, due largely to low oil prices, so our lawmakers cannot pretend that they are unaffected because the consequences are already being felt within the populace; rising food costs and unpaid government workers’ salaries are just two examples,” he said.
So far, the #OpenNASS online petition has generated over 1,600 signatures and is targeted at forcing parliament to come clean about its budget
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