The Chairman of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), Alhaji Muhammed Shehu, says that political office holders in Nigeria do not earn outrageous emoluments as speculated by Nigerians.Shehu made the announcement in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja.
NAN reports that Nigerians recently condemned reports on a proposed 114 per cent increase in salaries of political office holders by the commission, amid what they described as biting economic hardships in the country.
Shehu described information about the salary increase as not true.
He, however, said that it was the constitutional responsibility of RMAFC to determine and review the salaries of executive, legislative and judicial officers.
He said that their salaries were last reviewed in 2007.
โFrom 2008 till date there had not been any single review.
โLast year, some individuals took the Federal Government to court. These were some activists concerned about the salaries of judicial officers.
โIn the court, the judge ruled that a judge should be paid about N10 million a month, that was the court ruling, โ he said.
He said that the commission would not contemplate the speculated increase now, considering the prevailing economic challenges faced by Nigerians.
โWe 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.
โAs a commission, we are going to do our work but we are not going to say we will do it now.
โWe 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.
โI want to disabuse the minds of Nigerians. It is not true that people are getting jumbo salaries.
โThe monthly salary of Mr President is less than N1.5 million; that of a minister is not even up to one million naira.
โI know of an average CBN worker that is not even a director, who earns more than a minister.
โPeople in NNPC, NCC, ports authority earn huge salaries. What is the salary of a governor? What is the salary of a legislator?โ
The chairman said that what people considered as outrageous earnings by lawmakers were statutory office running costs, which should, ordinarily be managed centrally by the National Assembly Service Commission.
โI know some people will say members of the National Assembly get up to 10 million or 11 million monthly.
โThose are not salaries, they are like operating cost of running their offices which in other societies the legislator does not have to see because there is a structure.
โOnce you get elected, you make that structure from your constituency office to computers to logistics to the size of your constituency.
Shehu said: โwherever you have constituency office, the workers you hire, It is the National Assembly Service commission that is supposed to take care of that.
โBut the Nigerian system allows the legislator to be given a certain amount and then he deals with that and retires the receipts,โ the RMAFC chief said. (NAN)
