NASS

Foundation for Environmental Rights, Advocacy & Development has called for the review of the earnings of National Assembly members given the controversies it has generated recently.

The foundation made the call in a statement by the executive director, Nelson Nwafor, made available to LEADERSHIP yesterday in Umuahia, Abia State capital, saying the country cannot continue this way.

“Recent news reports making waves have it that a senator earns ₦21 million monthly in allowances and salaries, including running costs,” the statement asserted.

“Recently, former president Olusegun Obasanjo, while speaking in Abeokuta, alleged that the members fixed their salaries, leading to a response from the Senate’s spokesperson.”

“Before now, a former senator representing Kaduna Central, Sani Shehu, revealed that in his time, a senator earned a little over ₦13 million monthly.

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“While former Representative Sergius Ogun had revealed that he earned ₦8,000,000 monthly as a member of the House on the national television.”

“For a country whose budgetary deficits kept increasing with debt servicing gulping almost 100 percent of the revenue until recently, this is not just unsustainable but gross fiscal recklessness.”

The statement stated that the country’s fiscal environment does not support the situation and called for adjustments to meet the realities on the ground and reduce the cost of governance.

It said the foundation is aware that the annual basic salaries of the members are determined by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission as amended in the 1999 constitution.

But argued that: “This is unnecessary in a country with 133 million people facing multidimensional poverty, 20 million children out of school, people dying of treatable diseases like cholera (and monkeypox recently).”

It maintained that even though they should not earn beggarly sum by right, there was no “justification whatsoever for certain allowances and appurtenances that our lawmakers enjoy today.”

“Allowances like hardship and severance pay, 300 percent of the basic salary paid to no returning members, are meaningless. Also is recess allowance (holiday allowance or “tokens”).”