Ndume’s Treatise on Part-time Legislature, Lawmakers’ Sacrifice

When Senator Mohammed Ndume representing Borno South rallied his colleagues calling on them to sacrifice by reducing their perks of office as well as contemplate adopting part time legislature for the good of the country, I was bemused. Nonetheless, I also thought that at last, it was a fresh breathe of air coming from an arm of government that has abdicated its constitutional role of exercising checks and balances within the doctrine of separation of power with other arms of government and has become a deliberate parasite on the commonwealth.

In a country where an average workers earns less than $2 per day and the minimum wage, which took several years to negotiate, is now pegged at N30,000 per month up from its previous N18,000.

There is anger in the land, why not? Nigerians who are continually being pressured by their leaders to tighten their belts and sacrifice for the good of the country, are no longer smiling at the humongous earnings of their legislators.

The reasons are not far fetched. At the return to civil rule in 1999 and the subsequent inauguration of the National Assembly, the budget for the legislators was N2,204,150,000 representing 3.64% of the national budget that year to cater for 360 House members and 109 Senators.

By 2015, without any increase in the number of members, its budget skyrocketed from N2.2b to N227b representing 5.05% of the national budget that year. This year, the legislators increased the Assembly’s initially proposed budget sum of N125b to N128b an increase of N3b and N10b short of its previous 2019 budget of N139b.

The National Assembly and its organs, prior to 2015, had a yearly budget of N150bn for many years. A chunk of this sum, about N9bn of the vote went into the take-home pay of lawmakers.

However, between 2015 and 2020, the budget started ballooning upwards from N120bn to N139bn,even as Nigeria faced dwindling financial resources, particularly from crude oil market volatility. In the face of these unstable times, the budget rose to N139.5bn in 2018 only for the subsequent one to dip to N125bn in 2019.

While the legislators were smiling to the banks with bulging pockets, the living conditions of majority of Nigerians deteriorated by each passing day. The development caused anger and uproar with Nigerians seeking to know if these humongous payment to the legislators were duly earned, because to them, nothing could tangibly quantify their outrageous payments, which in comparative terms are about the highest in the world.

The financial profligacy exhibited by the National Assembly did not go unannounced. It caught the attention of the President, Muhammadu Buhari, who in 2015, opposed the huge pay, criticising the bid by the Senate at the time to buy cars worth over N47bn in addition to the transport allowances they were being paid.

Ideally, the National Assembly ought not be a drain pipe on the commonwealth as it is currently. The annual salary, including allowances, for each member of the Senate, according to RMAFC, is N12,766,320:00 (N12.7m). On a monthly basis, a Nigerian senator collects salary and allowances amounting to N1,063,860:00 (N1.06m).

On the other hand, each member of the lower legislative chamber, according to RMAFC, receives N9,529,038:06 (N9.5m) as annual pay and N794,086:83 every month.

The angst in the land emanates from the realization that in the House of Representatives, each of the 360 lawmakers pockets a total annual package of N136.6m or N11.3m monthly (or N33.9m quarterly). It has since come to light that the 6th Assembly jettisoned the old system of bulk quarterly payment which included total allowances, running cost and choosed to collapse the old system and embraced monthly payment instead where the entire emoluments are broken down per month.

Defending the Legislature from the allegations of collecting jumbo pay, Senate President, Ahmed Lawan declared that there was no such thing as ‘jumbo pay,’ adding that he earned N750,000 as salary.

But Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), dismissed Lawan’s position and asked him to stop misleading Nigerians. Sagay insisted that senators earn N15million monthly and not N750,000 as claimed by the Senate president.

Hear him: “That’s where the jumbo pay comes in when you talk of building, furniture, domestic this or that, 15 items and those items alone bring everything up to N13.5 million a month. So, simply mentioning the base salary, which brings it over N14 million, is not sufficient.

“What they get -- the current ones -- that I have not been able to release. I had the details of the previous house. They were mindboggling; we are talking of one person getting up to N280 million a year in allowances for his position. But I don’t know what they had during the Saraki era or what the present group is going to award themselves.” Sagay clarified.

It is for this reason that the current call by Ndume on his colleagues to shed some weight and sacrifice for the people especially in the middle of the global pandemic and with dwindling financial resources.

In his words: “In the current system, workers are not being paid living wages, whereas a privileged few are earning luxury wages. The National Assembly members, including me for instance, are paid luxury wages.

“How can we live comfortably when only a few of us are living a life of luxury when the majority is living in abject poverty? The N30,000 minimum wage is too small; it can make workers engage in corruption in order to survive.

“We have a budget of over N10 trillion and only 30 per cent is going to the majority whereas 70 per cent would be spent on a few minority. The system we presently practice is not fair in terms of moral, religious or socially.”

Yet, Ndume’s treatise has provoked several questions most of which border on the feasibility of realizing such a project with the current legislature. Another worry is that the whole concept is woven round reducing the cost of governance; and with the presidential system which we are copying and its unwieldiness, would a switch to a parliamentary system which Nigeria inherited from the British work?