Politics Of The Pocket …Another Look At Senator’s Jumbo Pay

Members of Nigeria Bar Association at the 2012/2013 End of Legal Year thanksgiving service of Rivers State Judiciary in Port Harcourt, last Friday.

So over-flogged, but without desired review, public quest for knowledge on how much their representatives earn for themselves and on behalf of constituents seemed a forgotten debate. But a member of the upper chamber of Nigeria’s bi-cameral legislature, the Senate, in self-righteous indignation, or genuine piece of guilt and repentance, has again brought it to the fore of national discuss.
Unfortunately, the same senator fits the former instead of the latter because he could not summon enough courage to be identified but pleaded to remain anonymous. Anonymity could confirm one or all of the following and more: He is barred to speak on the subject matter; He might be indicting self and colleagues, particularly when, he had not rejected his due from the jumbo pay budget; Didn’t quite believe in what he was saying or simply playing-out the familiar defeatist escape card – ‘if you can’t beat them, join them,’ among others.
Even the last option, fallacious at best, is not what should be expected of a serving senator, because in their various votes on issues, abstention has never been adjudged criminal. For debate purposes, that saying should instead be- ‘if you can neither beat nor join them, abstain.’
Strangely, since the return to democratic rule when the debate over the alleged high salary and allowances of National Assembly members began and more robust towards the middle of the 5th Senate to date, only a former senator has publicly appeared self-indicting.
Senator Sola Akinyele it was, who in a recent press interview said he felt guilty having benefitted from such unjustifiable pay as a senator. Akinyele represented Ekiti South Senatorial District in the senate between 2007 and 2011 was quoted as saying:
“Honestly, I think it’s unfair. I’m also guilty of it because I benefitted from it as a senator. It’s unfair for us elite to arrogate so much of the country’s resources to ourselves and still expect economic development.”
Akinyele without doubt, must have broken his ‘oath of silence’, as Sysilian Mafians would say, because he has nothing to lose. He, therefore, lacks the moral pedigree to persuade those still drawing from what he left off. If he had said then what he is  being quoted as saying, especially, while in the senate, he would have become a valuable friend of the people, particularly the curious media still asking to know how much Nigerian national law-makers earn in salaries, allowances and developmental votes meant for their various districts.
It was for the likes of Akinyele that the fiery American Black Rights activist Martin Luther King Jnr once said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”
Sadly, the only serving senator ever to speak and who should have won the prize has chosen to bury his identity in the familiar sands of Assembly secrecy, apparently unwilling to stir a debate that could culminate in the down-ward review of not only the silent many, but also his irresistible annual take-home pay.
The senator’s comments stemmed from some of the demands made by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) bordering on further improved pay, beyond the special package earlier obliged. He said that it was his utmost belief that ASUU made the demands it made because of their knowledge of what senators earn.
Conceding as fact that the senators’ salaries were indeed outrageous, and describing same as unnecessary, the unnamed senator, however, said, if he had rejected the jumbo pay he would have been viewed as insane having found himself within the system.
In veiled reference to the familiar dictum, he who goes to equity must do so in clean hands, the senator explained that a senate that enjoys such huge earnings from the Commonwealth could not have earned the respect and understanding of those asking for peanuts, from the senate’s perspective. He nonetheless described the ASUU demands as most outrageous and unheard of anywhere in the world.
“I believe what we earn is not justifiable. That is why ASUU was making unnecessary demands. I wonder why the Federal Government should reach an agreement with them on such demands. These are demands that are not made by lecturers anywhere in the world. If they are asking for well-equipped libraries, laboratories or conducive learning environment, it would have been understandable. But everything is about themselves.
“How can they be asking for extra pay because they have large classes? Is it not their responsibility to teach whether a class is large or not? And in any case, who admitted that large class? But they are making these demands just because they know what we earn,” the senator lamented.
Truly, we should sympathise with the senator, because he believes that if some wide-mouthed thorn-coat, close to or within the corridors of the National Assembly had not leaked to the striking lecturers, a closely guarded secret of how much senators earn, ASUU would not have made what he considers meaningless and outrageous demands. As outrageous and meaningless as the salaries, allowances and constituency votes of a senator appear?
The secrecy built around the subject, rather than discourage questions has continued to illicit deeper curiousity as it does rumours, which is hardly healthy for a senate that insists on executive transparency and openness in governance. This situation can only incapacitate the National Assembly in adjudicating on issues bordering emoluments of others, especially among various workers’ movements.
For a country that saw countless threats,warning and strikes, and then more strikes by Nigerian workers only to earn a minimum wage of N18,000, it is most absurd that senators and indeed members of the National Assembly could overlook what one-time slain US President J. F. Kennedy once said: “A society that cannot provide for the poor cannot protect the rich”.
Could it be reason for the increasing spate of violent protests and criminality in the land? A land of plenty where, less than 500 people, annually earn salaries and allowances that can offer employment to nearly 1,000,000 semi-skilled applicants at a start-off salary of just N25,000, if revelation, even with the guarded secret, of what National Assembly members earn, are leads to go by.
A recent internet publication put the basic salary of a senator at allegedly N2,484,245.50. And there are 109 of them, three of whom represent each of the 36 states of the federation and one for Abuja, Nigeria’s federal capital.
However, the N2,484,245.50 looks like a tinny pinch of the package because according to the publication, a Nigerian senator takes home N11million as regular salary and allowances. And they are 109.
Again, every quarter, the report said, a senator takes home N27 million as quarterly allowances. This does not cover windfalls from estacodes on foreign trips and allowances on tours. And they are 109.
The report also alleged that the senate leadership, comprising 10 principal officers draw N1,024,000.000 (One Billion, twenty million naira only) every three months, making N4,096,000,000bn in a year.
This figure, at the N18,000 minimum wage, can provide annual salaries of 38,641 and still pay a desperate casual worker willing to earn half the minimum wage of N9,000, that is, if these allegations are indeed true. If yes, then secrecy is necessary.
However, methink rather than leave it as a secret and illicit avoidable damaging rumours, the same reason, law-makers voted for the Freedom of Information Act, they should rationalise their earnings by first of all, making the facts known. After all, is it not said that a people, better educated on issues are easier to govern?
The senators at least have a starting point for defence. One of their own recently said elections in Nigeria are very expensive. According to him, by the time a senator wins elections, campaign tours, logistics, media contacts and mobilisation, security, youth and women support needs and indeed gifts for loyalty, the senator would have expended more than 100 million naira. This does not cover the senator’s health needs and those of key aides and supporters, not to mention the expenses often incurred in course of the often ranchorous party primaries.
Infact, according to the senator, it is more expensive for a would-be senator to win the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ticket than to win the general elections.
If these funds were sourced from banks and individuals, the benefactors surely must expect repayment in various forms and sometimes with interest. Could that have accounted for the consideration of what a senator earns? If that be yardstick, one can only imagine how a President and Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria should earn, since his campaign also cover the 109 senatorial districts: Take-home salary N11 million multiplied by 109? Don’t scream.
It should not be so. The world’s undebatably, most powerful president, US President Obama, the same report said, earn 400,000 dollars annually, that at an outrageous exchange rate of N200 only amounts to N80 million. But that should not be a yardstick because the number of hangers-on and behaviour of constituents to elected representatives are different here in Nigeria, same is true of the magnitude of rural poor who look on to the senators and members of the House of Representatives as a source of their livelihood.  They ask for weekly hand-outs instead of paying jobs, often.
My Agony is that rather than list more and more of these encumbrances as reasons for the kind of salaries and allowances they earn, the senators have chosen to make it a secret, like a tortoise that hides its head in the sands, with body totally visible. Such is the non-secret of the senate’s secret on jumbo pay.