Legislators are not earning higher than Buhari

Sir: Prince Adebọwale Adesina, Prince Adebayọ Adesina, Ṣekóoní Igboho, L.O. Abẹfẹ, Eyitanwa Ọladipupọ-Lawal, Abọlaji Tẹjidini, and Engineer Oladimeji Sai are all regular at Masquerade Team meetings.

The Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, is a chieftain of the Masquerade Team, but with explanation, I don’t agree with him that Nigeria legislators are earning more than the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB) and his Vice President, Professor Yẹmi Ọṣinbajo.

What is happening is that GMB does not even need any salary, as the self-appointed petroleum minister who is also recovering looted funds without accountability for anything to anybody. GMB does not need any salary. What he needs is a lack of opposition from the legislators, and he gets it by not opposing whatever the legislators decide to apportion themselves.

Recall that GMB did not handover the petroleum ministry to his Vice-president even though he was sick in London. His wife, Aisha said the family has more than enough to build a university to immortalise him, based on her knowledge of what he (GMB) has amassed.

I saw a video of the house of the late Robert Mugabe, built on land almost as large as Cairo. I have never been to Egypt, but I heard that Cairo is larger than Kano. God will punish the current rulers of Zimbabwe because if they are better than Mugabe, they will not be spending whopping sums of money on the corpse that is destined to decay. The thief went away with too much and you are spending too much to bury the thief.

The criminality of the Nigerian situation is that GMB is said to be earning N14 million; Osinbajo N12 million; each Senator, N36 million and each House of Representatives member N24 million monthly, yet reluctant to pay N30, 000 minimum wages to Nigeria workers across the board. Common Nigerians are anxiously awaiting the labour leaders to declare a nationwide work boycott. Asking GMB and others to slash their salaries into two is of good intention but not far-reaching at all. The principle of equitable minimum/maximum wages (top-down or down-up) towards national equity should be adopted. As things stand now, a legislator (Senator or Representative) can employ about 20 university professors, monthly, while you cannot even quantify what GMB is pocketing in actual facts and figures.

I cannot see GMB and Ọṣinbajo allowing the legislators to be earning more money than they themselves. I believe that there is more than meets the eye in the presidency than in the legislature. Then, as long as the rulers prioritise governmental terrorism against Muslim separatist groups (Boko Haram, the Shiites, etc), against the constitution that guarantees religious liberty and freedom of association, peace and progress will keep eluding the nation. Resistance to the rotational presidency is another situation of unbridled survival of the fittest which means endless political disorder and economic upheaval.

Which of the problems are the legislators addressing even as they apportion themselves huge salaries and employments, monthly? No, churches and mosques cannot criticize Nigeria rulers because they are all predators on common people and the nation as an entity. Hence the more common Nigerians troop to church and mosque worships, the more they fuel the fire that is roasting them alive.

Ifakayọde Ifayẹmi (Ekiti State) is said to have returned taken-over schools to the Christian missionaries that used to own them, promoting Christian and Islamic indoctrinations in schools attended by Nigerian children. Nigeria is misappropriated for Christian and Muslim imperialists, through morbid dictatorship and terrorism. That is the extent Nigeria rulers lack vision for progress. 

Prof. Ọlọjẹẹde Oyeniran Abiọjẹ wrote from University of Ilorin.