National Assembly Says Members Can Hardly Meet Their Needs, Resists Salary Cut

The House of Representatives on Thursday said that the Executive arm of government manages 99.902 percent of the national budget while the National Assembly receives a mere 0.8 percent of the money bill. 

It, therefore, argued that the calls for reduction of salaries of federal lawmakers and the cost of governance were misdirected, stressing that such calls should be directed at that arm of government.

The Green Chamber maintained that the National Assembly was struggling and therefore needed to be energised as the 0.8 percent budgetary allocation was too small.

A spokesman for the House, Benjamin Kalu, stated the position of the lawmakers while briefing reporters on their activities for the week in Abuja on Thursday.

He also disclosed that the various committees of House would from next Wednesday start the submission of budget defence reports.

“The 0.8 percent of the national budget for the National Assembly is not enough to run the institution. If you want to cut salaries, expenses, cost of governance, start it from the Executive. That’s the truth because the 0.8 percent you’re talking about takes care of the Senate and House,” Kalu said.

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“People think that the money that comes to the National Assembly is divided by members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. That’s a wrong narrative being sold and that’s what Nigerians believe.

”That’s why my office is actually engaging in what’s called infographics that are going to be released very soon. That will break it down once members approve it so that you know where everything goes into. Once we do that, you will see the truth will start coming out, and even the Executive will know there’s a need to cut down their expenses.

“Nigerians will be shocked that people they thought were rich are not able to meet their needs and that’s the truth. It’s high time we started at the 99.902 percent of the national budget and stop focusing on the 0.8 percent of the National Assembly.

”Nigerians are not focusing on that rather they’ve been conditioned to focus on the 0.8 percent. Is that not deceitful? Nigerians need to change their focus and find out what’s happening to that 99.902 percent.” 

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Contrary to Kalu’s claims, however, Nigerian legislators are among the highest-paid in the world. From 2003 to date, allocation to the National Assembly has ranged from ₦23 billion in 2003 to ₦154 billion in 2010. In the record ₦13 trillion budget for 2021 presented by President Muhammadu Buhari, ₦128 billion was allocated to NASS.

Former senator Shehu Sani in 2018 revealed that each senator earns ₦13.5 million ($35,500) as monthly ‘running cost’ as well as a monthly consolidated salary of ₦700,000 ($1,800). To put that into context, members of the United Kingdom Parliament earned £77,379 (₦38 million, or ₦3.2 million monthly) annual salary as of April 2018.

More so, if those figures are correct, it would mean the average legislator’s pay is over 191 times Nigeria’s gross domestic product per capita (GDP value split per citizen), which is estimated at $2,229 according to the World Bank. The minimum wage is less than $80 in Nigeria, where four in 10 are poor.

Like Kalu, Nigerian lawmakers have always defended such claims with a lawmaker describing their earnings as meagre. But a look at the extravagant lifestyles of Nigerian legislators such as Dino Melaye (with his endless collection of luxurious cars) and Teslim Folarin (from whose house hundreds of bikes were carted away during the EndSARS protests) belies the NASS stance that its members “can hardly meet needs.”

It is also believed that the lawmakers have come up with many other ways of expanding their revenue – including demanding payment before they confirm ministerial nominees, asking for bribes from federal Ministries, Departments, and Agencies to appropriate huge budgets allocations for them, and conducting oversight hearings or visits, through which they are paid off not to expose real or imagined corruption in the operations of the MDAs.

Moreover, lawmakers have powers of appropriation, that is, they approve the national budget and allocations to all government arms and MDAs and have over the years focused on extracting as much of the funds they appropriate for themselves. Hence, they essentially engage in what can be seen as a “competition for loot” with the Executive, which appears to be the basis for the envy of the government arm apparent in Kalu’s claims.