In addition to the basic salary and regular allowances, the member of the House of Representatives receives non-regular allowances. The amount for the non-regular allowances was cut from N15.41 million to N11.68 million while $550 is earmarked for estacode and was also unchanged after the revision.
Using the recommended and revised remuneration figures by the RMAFC, an attempt is then made to estimate the total package of the legislators. The estimated total package (basic salary and regular allowances) of all senators is N1.87 billion. For the House of Representatives members, the estimated total package (basic salary and regular allowances) is N6.08 billion. Therefore, the estimated total package of all the legislators (senators and House members) is N7.95 billion. When the revised recommended remuneration figures are used, the estimated package of all the senators drops to N1.20 billion while for the House members, it declines to N4.27 billion. For all the legislators, the estimated total package drops to N5.47 billion.
The estimates provided above include only the basic salary and regular allowances of the legislators. There is thus the need to incorporate the non-regular allowances in order to have a better estimate of the legislators’ overall package. Unlike the regular allowances, the bulk of the non-regular allowances are paid only once in the entire duration of a legislator’s tenure. Furniture allowance is paid once in four years, severance gratuity paid after a legislator successfully completes his or her term, and vehicle loan also paid only once. The last component of the non-regular allowance is the duty tour allowance and is paid only when the need arises.
Since the bulk of the non-regular allowances are paid only once, it is assumed that the legislators are paid the average of that amount every year throughout their four-year tenure. Therefore, on the basis of this assumption, the estimated package of all senators is N2.41bn while for the House members it is N7.47 billion. This implies that the estimated total package (basic salary + regular allowances + non-regular allowances) of all legislators increased to N9.88bn. Using the revised remuneration figures, the estimated remuneration of all senators drops to N1.58 billion while that of the House of Representatives members drops to N5.31bn. The total estimated remuneration of all the legislators drops to N6.89bn.
Having estimated the total package of the legislators, the next point is now to set our estimates in perspective. First, the RMAFC puts actual remuneration of the legislators at N40.28 billion in 2007 and N60.42 billion in 2009. These figures are many times higher than the estimated N9.88 billion before revision and N6.89 billion after using the revised recommended figures.
Itsay Sagay, in a lecture titled ‘The Status and Role of the Legislature in a Democratic Society’ delivered at the 3rd Opeyemi Bamidele lecture in 2010, noted that in 2009, a senator in Nigeria earned N240 million while the House member got N204 million. When the N240 million is multiplied by 109 senators, the total remuneration for all senators that year comes to N26.16 billion. Similarly, if the N204 million for the House member is multiplied by the 360 members, this amounts to N73.44bn.
The implication of this is that the total remuneration of all the legislators, according to Sagay, was N99.6 billion in 2009. Third, while the estimated remunerations are significantly lower than the actual remuneration reported by the RMAFC, the remunerations in the public domain as captured by Sagay’s view may be overstated.
In sum, the remuneration of legislators remains a contentious issue 16 years after the return to democracy. The public perception is that the lawmakers earn more than the recommendations by the RMAFC. While the yearly budgetary allocation to the legislature is available, the controversy is the lack of mechanism to ascertain the share of this budget used for salaries and allowances. This article provided a perspective on this matter by first discussing the share of the annual budget that goes to the legislature and then used the recommended RMAFC figures to estimate the remuneration of the legislators.
The conclusion is that while the public’s view about the legislators’ remuneration may be exaggerated, the perception is not misplaced because the legislators could well be earning many times more than their official package going by the estimates in this article. Interestingly, the RMAFC recently indicated its desire to review downwards the salaries and allowances of public officeholders in line with current economic realities.
This may however prove to be another paper exercise from the legislature angle, except there is a genuine desire to change from the old ways of doing things. With the way the 8th National Assembly kick-started its activities, it is unlikely that an individual in the person of President Buhari can lobby to bring about any transformation in the legislature. Besides, he has promised not to interfere in the activities of other arms of government, meaning that he certainly cannot throw open the windows of the legislature so that Nigerians can see what the lawmakers are actually earning.
Maxwell Ekor
