The poorly paid senator

Deputy Chief Whip and representative of Ebonyi North Senatorial District in the National Assembly, Senator Onyekachi Nwaebonyi,  recently caused an uproar in the polity when he downplayed the raging controversy over the remuneration of Nigerian lawmakers. During an interview with the News Central TV, the senator was asked how much was the take-home pay of a senator in Nigeria and his reply was this: “If you want to know my salary, it is very easy for you to do that. If you go to relevant agencies, it is a public document. The salary is there but I can assure you that that salary you are looking at, if I spend it with you within two days, you will agree with me that we leaders are actually suffering.”

When asked if he had isolated the salaries of lawmakers alone or the total package of salaries and allowances, the senator became more impassioned, saying: “Everything put together, everything put together. If I place it on the table with you, for one week, you will borrow money for me, you will pity me, you wouldn’t even like to come into it because it is not the way you see it. The burden is much on us politicians, we are suffering and smiling but like I said, it is not for pity that we campaigned. It is a mandate we fought for and we must use it to better the lives of our people. If you come to my constituency, I can tell you some projects that are ongoing which are not in the budget but I am sponsoring those projects because I have the passion and my people need those services.”

Predictably, Senator Nwaebonyi’s claim was condemned by many Nigerians. This is because the wages of Nigerian lawmakers have been the subject of debates for a while, given the opacity around it. Nigerians are justly bothered about the earnings of their lawmakers being shrouded in mystery. The fact, as revealed by a few of the lawmakers in rare moments of candour, is that the federal lawmakers earn such humongous allowances that they are too ashamed to reveal or too afraid to let Nigerians know. The Nigerian people, who have wallowed in untold poverty, lack and degradation for decades, should not have had to contend with the kind of segregationist attention paid to lawmakers’ welfare by successive governments. While the cost of living has made life almost unlivable for Nigerians over the years, lawmakers’ welfare has been habitually and embarrassingly enhanced. Thus, when Senator Nwaebonyi made the laughable comment on the television programme imputing that lawmakers live excruciating lives of lack, he attracted flak and mockery from a people enraged at the uneven scale of comfort between them and their representatives in parliament.

Convinced that the Nigerian legislature is the metaphorical Bermuda Triangle where the Nigerian wealth is buried, Nigerians have canvassed that lawmaking be made a part-time venture. They have consistently queried why lawmakers who waste away a substantial portion of their legislative time table in the name of recesses and whose major preoccupation is with matters having to do with their welfare and “constituency projects,” should be rewarded with such stupendous remuneration. Nwaebonyi apparently provoked the critical public when, rather than give a figure to the “paltry” salaries and allowances he claimed are collected by senators, he chose to go on a circus. Was the senator concerned that if he revealed the actual earnings of senators, he would either face suspension or get the legislative institution roundly lampooned by impoverished Nigerians?

 To be sure, many Nigerians would gladly trade places with the distinguished senator and earn his “paltry” salary and allowances. For years, the National Assembly establishment  has  rebuffed attempts by Nigerians to know what lawmakers earn. Till date, apart from disguised and undisguised jabs at the Nigerian people such as the impassioned remarks by Nwaebonyi, no attempt has been made to come clean on lawmakers’ wages. Nigeria is certainly one of the few countries, if not the only country, in the world where lawmakers’ allowances are cult secrets. It can be no surprise, then, that the interpretation given to this travesty by the Nigerian people is that they earn such stupendous salaries and allowances that they are too ashamed to reveal or too alarmed to let people know about. This is unfortunate because in most countries of the world, the salaries and allowances of lawmakers are on government websites, and any query that constituents have is attended to with dispatch.

A troubling dimension came into the Nigerian governmental system when lawmakers began performing executive functions. Frequently, lawmakers speak of achievements in road construction and the like. This is an anomaly, and everything that can be done to stop it should be done, and with urgency too. While lawmakers are expected to attract projects to their constituencies by lobbying the executive, they are not expected to become emergency contractors. A situation where lawmakers get involved in executive functions is not ideal. Neither is a situation in which they collude with ministers and heads of government departments and agencies to rip the people off, or whimsically inserting projects into the national budgets and using them as funnels of corruption.

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According to the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), each Nigerian senator receives a monthly salary of around ₦1.06 million,  comprising a basic salary and allowances for fuel, personal assistants, and domestic staff. In addition to this, senators also receive substantial office running cost allowances, with some figures suggesting that this can reach up to ₦21 million per month. This is separate from their official salary a fixed by RMAFC, according to a disclosure by a former senator in 2024. This hardly qualifies as “paltry” in a country where the minimum wage is N70,000. And there is a distinct possibility that this figure is even outdated.

Lawmakers’ pay should not be determined through guesswork. Accountability is not a mere catchphrase. It will be a euphemism to say that Senator Nwaebonyi was not being forthright in his interview when he claimed that senators are underpaid. The truth is that he and his colleagues are taking the Nigerian people for fools.