Let me make it clear from the onset that this piece is about the National Assembly. However, readers’ minds should not start running riot at the mention of ‘dog’ in the headline. For this piece has nothing to do with Sen. Dino Melaye or the Reps, who recently visited the United States – or whatever they did or did not do there.
Of course, I would have wanted to revisit those issues, but Maimunat, a secondary school mate of mine, made a Whatsapp posting that put everything in perspective and made me sheathe my sword.
Maimunat, whose dad used to be the state’s Grand Khadi when we were in school, reminded us that while a flock of lions is called a “Pride’, and a flock of sharks is called a ‘School’, a flock of baboons is actually called a ‘Parliament’.
So, I need not say more. I rest my case.
Moreover, I might not have a great deal to say. As someone who has long been classified a ‘Wailer’ on the social media, I now have fewer people to visit at the Federal ‘Cowpital’ Territory (FCT). After all, most of my ‘thieving’ PDP friends have been voted out of power. I have since resorted to watching developments from far away Lagos. Everything I say, therefore, is based on hearsay and wicked rumours fuelled by the enemies of CHANGE. Believe it!
For instance, these wicked rumour mongers claim that the cows are now in power in Abuja. That, apart from over-running every farmland in down south, the cows move in and out of the Federal Secretariat at will. And if the rumour mongers are to be believed, the cows are now eyeing the lush grass on the grounds of the Aso Rock Villa. Government of the cows, by the cows, and for the cows! I think, that’s a better definition of Chief Niyi Akintola (SAN)’s definition of “Government of illiterates, by illiterates, and for the enlightened”. But, I digress.
For this week, I’m more interested in the sinful wages the lawmakers allegedly approve and pay to themselves, and how this has come to become a major clog in the wheel of Nigeria’s progress. Now, Add that to the allegations recently thrown up by Hon. Abdulmumin Jibrin, the stoking of the fire by former president Olusegun Obasanjo, the controversial quest for immunity, the SUVs, curious constituency projects, the padded budgets, the forgery trial, the CCT trial, the hunger in the land, the ‘technical recession’, and you just can’t wait to grab at any legislator’s neck and wring it.
But then, I sometimes sit back and ask myself: How much of these allegations is true? Or is someone determined to give the legislature dog a bad name in order to hang it?
A couple of years ago, PDP’s Sen. Smart Adeyemi (whose seat is now being occupied by APC’s Sen. Dino Melaye) showed some of us his pay slip. We could not believe the figure. It dawned on us that a Senator’s annual pay was barely N15 million. Of course, that’s no small money – considering that so many other hardworking people, who are more important to this country than the senators, do no earn nearly half that amount.
However, I came to the conclusion that we could not honestly accuse the lawmakers of earning ‘jumbo’ salaries or crippling our economy with their heavy salaries. But then, it would be naïve to focus on the salary alone – for salary is just a little fraction of a typical senator’s ‘loot’. The problem must then be with their allowances.
But they have refused to clearly tell us what the allowances are.
It was only a few months ago that a doyen of the media, who also happens to be very very close to the people in government, gave us a rough breakdown of what the takings of the average member of the House of Representatives looked like.
It comprises, but not necessarily limited to the these:
* Full monthly Salary – N1,125,000 (for some who were servicing one loan or another, the figure came to about N774,000)
* Quarterly lump sum (each member) – N24 million
* Quarterly lump sum (Speaker) – N75 million
* Deputy Speaker – N66 million
* House Leader – N36 million
* Chief Whip – N33 million
* Deputy Chief Whip – N30 million
Now, I wouldn’t know where furniture allowance, wardrobe allowance and all other allowances as well as salartes of statutory aides figure in all these, but my elementary arithmetic tells me that it takes just about N5.4 billion to pay the green chambers.
The senators don’t earn twice as the Reps, but even if we go with that arithmetic, we’ll still come up with less than N15 billion as annual salaries of the 469 lawmakers in the two chambers.
Nigeria’s budget for 2016 is N6.6 trillion. So, how come it’s this N15 billion that has made us unable to do anything else?
Of course, I’d be playing the ostrich to argue that it’s only this N15 billion that the lawmakers funded their otherwise lavish lifestyles with. But I can bet my last dime that everything else they get is with the full connivance (and collaboration) of the members of the executive – whether it’s in oversight functions, padded budget or patronage through genuine or spurious contracts (to get the lawmakers to look away without asking the relevant questions). Everyone gets a cut.
I, therefore, get confused when we put all the blame on the legislature and are permanently on their case, while the actual looting is going on in the other arms.
I’m sure, when Obasanjo says the lawmakers are thieves, he’s not referring to their ‘jumbo pay’. He’s probably referring to how they blackmail the executive into giving them scandalous monies. But then, the question to ask is: Is it not the person, who has something to hide that would fall for such cheap blackmail? If your hands, in the executive, are clean, you’ll always call the bluff of the legislature.
This might not be the case, of course. One is just playing the devil’s advocate. But, if truth must be told, Nigerians are getting disillusioned and are getting tired of this one-point agenda government.
Of course, it would be a great idea to rout corruption from our system and people must be made to answer for their infraction, but the feelers one is getting is that there is a deliberate plan to keep us permanently angry with our past, as a way of diverting our attention from our present – and possibly forget that we have a future to secure. For even as we’re yet to conclude most of the corruption cases we’ve already thrown up, the Presidency is digging up more and more – just to keep us talking about it.
Having barely scratched the Dasukigate arms probe and the concomitant PDP campaign funds, the Presidency is now digging up ex-governors (some who left office nearly 10 years ago). It all appears diversionary from the fact that the economy is fast moving from recession to depression, and that the exchange rate is atrociously heading to N500 to the dollar.
Very soon too, those behind the coup that overthrew Buhari in 1985 could also be sweating in their palms.
Meanwhile, JAMB, NUC, NECO and the Ministry of Education are playing ping-pong with our children’s education. If it is not post UTME exams today, then it’s the entrance examination into the Unity Colleges. The same Unity Colleges we have since abandoned.
But, of course, our leaders don’t care. Their own children are schooling and graduating from foreign universities and colleges.
Painfully, after studying abroad, these kids are reluctant to return, because nothing works here. They soon settle down and begin to work there, using their expertise (which we paid for with funds earned or looted from Nigeria) to the benefit of the other countries. In other words, we use our resources to train high-level manpower for other countries.
Now, with Brexit, UK is talking of deportation. But it’s not deporting the highly trained Nigerian professionals. It’s looking in the direction of the lower cadre Nigerians. The dregs of the society! UK will return those to us and keep our best brains, because those are the ones who can earn above £35,000 per annum. Are you still wondering why our economy is in a mess?
But we’ve left the leprosy to focus on treating the itch that comes with it.

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