- NASS members’ aides deserve their wages as at when due
The National Assembly has become a tale of two cities. While one is prosperous, the other is destitute. We are talking about legislators and their aides. While the legislators are overpaid, their aides are groaning in lack. A report claims the aides have not been paid since June, when the 9th National Assembly resumed. The report also claimed that some entitlements previously enjoyed by the aides have been severed. But the Director of Information, National Assembly Management, Rawlings Agada, pushed the blame for the reduction in allowances to the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC).
While the blame game continues, it is interesting that the legislators, who employed the aides are not complaining of none payment of entitlements. Most likely, the legislators have been paid not only their salaries, but their other outrageous allowances in full. According to Mr Agada, some of the allowances claimed by the aides are privileges, and need approval by NASC. On their part, the National Assembly Legislative Aides Forum has threatened to fight their cause if dialogue with management fails.
While we do not support that the aides be paid the kind of mindboggling allowances that their principals enjoy, there is no justification to owe a worker his wage. To make the matter more bizarre, one of the reasons for the humongous earning of the legislators is the claim that they are supposed to employ aides to aid their legislative job. So, while in the budget books, huge sums are earmarked as the money due to be paid to all manner of legislative aides, in reality, the aides receive pittance, and now that pittance is paid in arrears.
That is the tragedy of the two ‘cities’, living side by side, yet wide apart in their makeup. So, while the principals are neither lacking nor lagging, their aides live in abject poverty close to their masters who live in opulence. Such discrimination is condemnable, and we urge the leadership of the 9th National Assembly to put an end to the aberration of owing workers, for work done. As custodians of the laws of the land, the National Assembly should be interested in outlawing the owing of salaries by employers.
In some jurisdictions, it is a crime not to pay a worker his wage when it is due. That is because the consequences of owing a worker may be so devastating, that the only remedy is to pay as at when due. We recall that sometime in 2017, there was a report that one Hassan Abiodun, a legislative aide to the former deputy speaker, Yusuf Lasun, died from the rupture of appendicitis in his stomach, as he could not pay the medical bill for an operation. Regardless of the excuses made by the National Assembly management, his colleagues were adamant that Hassan died because he was owed arrears of salary, and so couldn’t pay his bill.
In climes where you could easily be thrown out of your house for owing a week’s rent, payment of salary has huge consequences and could expose the employer to huge challenges. The report said most of the aides are borrowing to go to work, and fend for themselves. Such a state of affairs should be unacceptable to the legislators, if they truly appreciate their responsibility as legislators. The explanation that they are still working things out is untenable, as the demands of daily living do not wait for a lackadaisical management.
Regardless of whether it is the National Assembly management, or the National Assembly Service Commission, or the legislators that is in charge of the salaries of the legislative aides, we demand that they should be paid their entitlements immediately.
