LAGOS — IN view of the hardship in the country, some stakeholders have asked the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, RMAFC, to shelve its plans to review the salaries of political office-holders in Nigeria.
RMAFC Chairman, Mohammed Shehu, had on Monday, reportedly hinted at the plan and described the current earnings of the President and other political office occupants as inadequate, unrealistic, and outdated in the face of rising responsibilities and economic challenges.
According to Shehu, President Bola Tinubu currently earns N1.5m monthly, ministers less than N1million which, he said, had remained unchanged since 2008.
“You are paying the President N1.5million a month. Everybody believes that it is a joke. You cannot pay a minister less than N1million per month since 2008 and expect him to put in his best without necessarily being involved in some other things.
“You pay either a CBN governor or the D-G 10 times more than you pay the President. That is just not right. Or you pay him (the head of an agency) 20 times higher than the Attorney-General of the Federation. That is absolutely not right,” he had said.
Shehu’s proposal, yesterday, elicited sharp opposition in the polity, with some saying it was provocative, insensitive, selfish and wrongly timed.
Among those who spoke on the issue are the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP; Northern Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN; Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF; former President of the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture, NACCIMA, Otunba Dele Oye; founder of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, Chief Chekwas Okorie; African Democratic Congress, ADC; New Nigeria Peoples Party, NNPP; and the Coalition of United Political Parties, CUPP.
Salary hike for politicians provocative, says ACF spokesman
In a chat with Vanguard in his personal capacity, ACF National Publicity Secretary, Professor Tukur Baba, described the proposed salary increase for political office holders as “disappointing, insensitive and provocative.”
Baba said the plan was “disappointing because, given the state of the economy and the hardships faced by the populace, political office-holders are least deserving of any upward review unless it is in the direction of drastic reduction in their earnings.”
He added that the move was “insensitive because it flies in the face of the current realities where about 60 per cent of Nigerians suffer multi-dimensional poverty and over 75 per cent of the population live on meagre incomes that cannot meet basic needs.”
