N23.7bn NASS severance: Lawmakers lobby to include ‘unofficial’ aides
Some lawmakers in the National Assembly are intensely lobbying to include some of their “unofficial” aides as beneficiaries of the N23.7 billion severance package for outgoing senators and members of the House of Representatives of the 8th National Assembly, Daily Trust has gathered.
The lobby, according to sources, emanated from some of the legislative aides who are not officially entitled to benefit from the severance package, having fallen outside “Consolidated Aides” circle who are entitled to the severance package alongside their principals.
Statutorily, each senator and a member of the House of Representatives, who is not a principal officer, is entitled to four legislative aides who are officially entitled to benefit from the payoff.
However, some of the lawmakers went out of their way to hire more than the required number of aides, and as such want their names included among those to benefit from the severance package under a certain undisclosed deal.
The same applies to the offices of the senate president, speaker and other principal officers of the 8th Assembly whose aides far outweigh the constitutionally stipulated number.
A legislative aide of one of the lawmakers in the House of
Representatives, who pleaded anonymity, confided in Daily Trust that some of the deals were cut 50-50 and 60-40 between the aides and their principals.
“Some of these aides, even though not officially entitled to benefit from the money, have entered into agreement with their masters to access the money, and then collect a certain percentage at the end of the day.
“This is not a new practice here (National Assembly) but the only difference now is that the pressure and lobby is becoming more intense,” the source said.
Meanwhile, legislative aide another who was contacted on the same issue feigned ignorance, but pledged to “find out” as he also falls outside the “Consolidated Aides”.
In the 2019 Appropriation Bill recently passed by the National Assembly, Daily Trust reports that N23.7bn was set aside for severance package to outgoing lawmakers of the 8th Assembly.
The amount also covers allowances for incoming lawmakers and their aides, as well as the induction and inauguration of the 9th Assembly.
This is outside the N128bn budgeted for the National Assembly in 2019, including the Senate, House of Representatives, legislative aides, National Assembly Commission, National Assembly Legislative Institute and the service-wide vote of the legislature.
Severance package, calculated as 300 per cent of annual salaries, is paid to lawmakers every four years at the expiration of the legislative session.
This is in addition to other irregular allowances such as housing, calculated at 200 per cent; furniture, 300 per cent; recess, 10 per cent, among other sundry allowances.
The Remuneration Package for Political, Public and Judicial Office Holders (February 2007date) published by the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) entitles a severance package of N6bn and N7.5bn respectively for the Speaker of the House and the Senate President respectively.
Senators and members of the House of Representatives, as well as their four aides each, are also entitled to various amounts of severance pay which are calculated as a percentage of their gross payment per annum.
Although legal, the allocation of such huge sum for lawmakers already entitled to jumbo running cost, has elicited barrage of criticism from concerned Nigerians.
An Abuja-based constitutional lawyer, Prof. Agbo Madaki, recommended a downward review of the severance package and other “insane emoluments” by RMAFC.
In 2018, Sen. Shehu Sani put the allowance received by each senator every quarter at N40.5m, which translates to N13.5m per month. Likewise, a member of the House of Representatives receives about N30m a quarter as running cost.
This is in addition to an annual salary of N18.6m for each senator and N15.2m for each member of the House of Representatives.