Amid deepening economic difficulties, the continued extravagance of our 109 senators and their 360 counterparts in the House of Representatives has once more seized national attention. But the Eighth National Assembly remains unrepentant in wallowing in lavish lifestyle at the expense of the taxpayer. While the pay of our lawmakers is still steeped in controversy, the Senate is hell-bent on buying 110 Sport Utility Vehicles, costing N20 million each, as official vehicles for senators. The House is also considering purchasing their own brand of cars, despite the prevailing economic crunch that has crippled most states to the point of many owing salaries for up to 10 months.
The Economist, an influential London magazine, in 2013, said a Nigerian lawmaker’s $189,500 pay per annum was the highest in the world. This is a rip-off of Nigerians as it was by far above the income prescribed by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission for senators and Reps. Each senator is entitled to N12,766,320 per annum. Government’s monetisation policy provides N4,052,800 for accommodation and N6,079,200 for furniture. Also, a member of the House is expected to legitimately earn N9,529,038 per annum, in addition to N3,970,425 for accommodation and N5,955,637 for furniture.
But this is not what they collect. In the Sixth National Assembly, pressure from members on the leadership of the House, led by Dimeji Bankole, compelled it to secure a controversial N40 billion bank loan to increase its so-called “running costs” from N27 million to N42 million per quarter per lawmaker. This was greeted with a national outrage. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission smelt corruption and put Bankole and his deputy, Usman Nafada, on trial. But a Federal High Court disagreed; it discharged and acquitted them. However, the judge described their action as “morally indefensible and morally insensitive.” Lamentably, the taxpayer bore the burden of repaying the loan.
Financial scandals and corruption have engulfed the National Assembly like a cloud of dust.Let’s take the most egregious example. Every legislative session, lawmakers abuse the monetisation policy by buying official cars with public funds, which they disguise as committee “pool vehicles.” Yet, each senator receives N8 million as car loan for which the Federal Government pays N1,519,800 annually for fuelling and maintenance, according to RMAFC. We are shocked and outraged that at a time when the economy is going down in the tubes, the Eighth National Assembly is not ready to change from this perfidious path.
Evidently, the jumbo emolument phenomenon of Nigeria’s federal lawmakers stems from the abuse of their legislative powers, especially that of appropriation. Before now, at least, they provided N150 billion in the budget every year, through which they helped themselves, just as the budget was padded with N600 billion for their so-called constituency projects. Some government agencies too, have had their sub-heads padded for contracts and other pecuniary reasons to favour the greedy legislators.
These parliamentary abuses have always brought the National Assembly on a head-on collision with the executive arm. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo survived impeachment threats, especially in 2000 and 2005, for refusing to sign the budget following such discoveries, which made the budget expansionary and difficult to implement. His successors, Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, each had their own share of lawmakers’ intimidation or arm-twisting. Sometimes, budgets passed in February were not signed into law until in April or May.
During the Fourth National Assembly, the Senate impeached two of its presidents because of reckless spending and bribe-for-budget scandals. The present Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, gave a vivid account in his memoir: The Accidental Public Servant, of how a senator openly asked him for bribe to confirm him as a minister. First, the Senate Committee on Power (Electricity) had demanded $5 million from him to pass a bill on electricity reform when he was the Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises. Again, a principal officer of the Senate and his cohort had asked him to pay N54 million to a select group of senators for the Senate to confirm his nomination as a minister in Obasanjo’s cabinet.
The House too is not immune to such dishonourable conduct. A fuel subsidy probe by its ad hoc committee in 2012 landed one of its ranking members in court, as he allegedly collected $620,000 from a Lagos businessman to remove his company from the list of firms indicted in the scandal. Also, a power probe over the alleged $16 billion invested in the power sector without delivering electricity to Nigerians could not be considered by the parliament over alleged corruption by legislators.
Yet, transparency is the cornerstone of an open government. The United States Congress has 100 senators with 40 aides each, and 435 representatives with 25 aides each. But, every legislative aide and his or her emoluments must be accounted for because they form part of the structure that monitors what government agencies do and do not do. To bring optimum transparency to their work and pay, the British parliament decided in the wake of the MPs expenses scandal in 2010 to task an independent body – the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority – to determine their pay. IPSA, which can be likened to the RMAFC, instructively said, “The new rules are fair to MPs and the public purse, workable, and crucially, transparent. Anyone can go online and see what their MP has claimed for, or what they are paid.” This is the big difference between the UK parliament and the National Assembly: transparency in Britain and total opacity and impunity here.
But this must end. The National Assembly’s ineffectiveness makes its size and cost painful injuries added to the insult of impunity. As it is done in civilised and open societies, never again should we allow people with tainted and questionable credentials to take undue advantage of the public treasury. We insist that to truly transit to democracy, the excesses of the legislators must be stopped. They must no longer be allowed to appropriate anything beyond what the RMAFC prescribes; they must submit their accounts to public scrutiny and full audit from 1999 to date as Obasanjo suggested. They should also undertake proper oversight and stop extorting bribes from the MDAs; and they should be stopped from usurping executive functions via the notorious “constituency projects.” Lawmakers should set up functional legislative institutions by having constituency offices, aides and researchers, instead of pocketing allowances released for these purposes.
