RMAFC Chairman Says Lawmakers Don’t Earn Outrageous Salary
The Chairman of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), Mohammed Shehu has disclosed that members of the National Assembly do not earn bogus salaries as speculated but statutory office running costs.
He made the disclosure on Sunday noting that the salaries of the country’s political officeholders would not be increased at this time.
Shehu said “What people considered as outrageous earnings of lawmakers were statutory office running costs which should be managed by the National Assembly Service Commission.
“I know some people will say members of the National Assembly get up to N10 million or N11 million monthly.
“Those are not salaries, they are like operating costs of running their offices which in other societies the legislator does not have to see because there is a structure.
“Once you get elected, you make that structure from your constituency office to computers to logistics to the size of your constituency.
“Wherever you have constituency office, the workers you hire, it is the National Assembly Service Commission that is supposed to take care of that,” the RMAFC chief added.
The Chairman emphasized that the decision to push forward the review of the public officers’ salaries was due to current economic challenges in the country.
He said the last time the review took place was in 2007, adding that political officeholders do not earn outrageous emoluments as speculated by Nigerians.
RMAFC said in June the federal government was considering a 114 per cent pay rise for political and judicial officers in the country.
While clarifying the situation, Shehu said: “From 2008 till date there has not been any single review.
“Last year, some individuals took the federal government to court. These were some activists concerned about the salaries of judicial officers.
“In the court, the judge ruled that a judge should be paid about N10 million a month, that was the court ruling.
“We are Nigerians, we are not going to start talking about reviewing salaries of political office holders now because of the challenges that the government is facing.
“As a commission, we are going to do our work but we are not going to say we will do it now. We will do it when the climate is right and then we will take it forward to the stakeholders for them to decide on what to do.”
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