The Federal Government should ensure that former governors, deputies and Ministers at the federal level identified to be earning double salary, be excused from privileges at the state level.
This is contained in a communique of a one-day Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and media roundtable weekend in Abuja and which also urged the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) and the National Assembly to harmonize salary figures to ensure accountability and transparency in fiscal matters.
The event under the People (V2P) project tagged “Fiscal Transparency of Annual Payments of Salaries, Pension and emoluments for Members of the National Assembly” was organised by the African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development (Centre LSD), DfID and Christian Aid.
Participants said that the revelation that 21 current serving Senators are also receiving salaries from their states as former governors and deputy governors (as pension), is worrisome at time when workers are owed arrears of salaries and the masses groaning under recession.
“The monthly salaries of Nigerian legislators put together are huge and constitute a drain on the meager resources of the country, thus dampening the ability of the managers of the economy to address the country’s infrastructural deficit.
“Unlike what obtains in other climes, (Nigeria) politicians and political office holders see politics as a career from where they earn bogus salaries, pension and emoluments. Infrastructural provision in any economy requires earmarking 12 percent of the annual GDP of the country, even when this is the reality, what is budgeted for infrastructure in Nigeria is only seven percent of annual GDP, which of course explains the level of reason for the current infrastructural deficit in the country,” it said.
The communique urged the Government and National Assembly members to urgently address the contradiction of the high salary which places the wealth of the state in the hands of few persons contrary to the stipulation of Section 16 subsection 2 paragraph b and C of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
It however commended the Kwara State example where former governors and deputies who have moved to the Senate were barred from benefit from the state pensions and emolument packages until they seize to be Federal Legislators.