Senate defends running costs for lawmakers
• Kawu accuses Obasanjo of introducing corruption to NASS
The Senate on Thursday, offered a clarification on the claim by Senator representing Kano South, Abdurrahman Kawu Sumaila, who had in an interview with BBC Hausa Service on Wednesday disclosed that he earns a cumulative N21 million monthly in salary and allowances. The salaries and allowances of lawmakers have been shrouded in secret, triggering heated debates.
The Senate spokesman and Chairman, Senate Committee on Public Affairs, Yemi Adaramodu, in a statement, maintained that running costs were quite different from the salary and personal allowances of the lawmakers, which he reiterated has been fixed by the statutory agency empowered to fix salary and allowances of those in elective offices, the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC).
Chairman of the RMAFC, Muhammed Bello, had on Tuesday, revealed that each Senator collects a monthly salary and allowances of the sum of N1,063,860:00. Adaramodu, who submitted that running cost was not peculiar to the legislature for running of their offices, further clarified that “such funds are retired by relevant officers after being used for official purposes and proof of genuine expenditure.
“It’s not a personal allowance or salary of the legislator,” he stressed, adding that such funds were also used for constituency office staff. The Senate spokesman who expressed strong reservations over the narrative of wasteful spending by the parliament declared that “the Nigerian Senate is an assembly of accomplished and successful professionals, administrators and captains of industries, who are not driven by these often-touted egregious pecuniary bits, rather for their patriotic zeal in the nation’s quest to breathe life to Nigeria’s political and socio-economic dry bones.
“All arms of government and their personnel, governors, ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Directors-General, commissioners, even boards and parastatals, including local government councils run their activities with running costs and the National Assembly is not an exemption. Thus, the money referred to by Senator Sumaila is neither his salary nor personal allowance. It’s for the daily running of offices by Senators and other attached statutory officials. It equally provides funds for constituency office staff. It is also for oversight functions and community engagements.”
Meanwhile, Kawu who made the disclosure, has accused ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo of introducing corruption to the National Assembly.
Obasanjo had last week accused the lawmakers of fixing their salaries and allowances amid the biting economic hardship in Nigeria.
But Kawu faulted Obasanjo’s remark. “When you are talking about corruption, it is Obasanjo who introduced corruption into the National Assembly,” he said on Thursday’s edition of Channels Television’s The Morning Brief.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Sport said: “I have proof because it is his government and his associates who corrupted some members of the National Assembly for them to alter the Constitution for him to continue to contest for a third term as president.”
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