By Tonnie Iredia
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 voicesattacked 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 forNigerians
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
the legislators 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, a second 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
figure by 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?
*Dr. Iredia is a commentator on public issues
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