Nigeria: How much do we pay our lawmakers? - Part II

Back on the streets

The Nigerian youth marched out to our legislative houses all around the country on Thursday the 26^th of September 2013.

On Twitter, they mustered and gathered organised under the Twitter hashtag of #OurNASS where Nigerians demanded accountability, transparency and better representation. [Al Jazeera]

The occupation of elected political office had long shifted from the call to service to what was self-serving interests exemplified by outrageous remunerations that make the eyes water.

A salary to feast on

It is the long held belief that our democracy is both profligate and extravagant, it is safe to assume that the cost is unsustainable.

However, when the people congregated at the National Assembly in Abuja, some senators braved the crowds and came out to chat with the people where for the very first time a senator presented his payslip detailing the salary for one month paid in January 2010, in the previous electoral cycle as tabulated below:

Without considering inflationary changes and reassessments up to 2013, this alone presents an interesting reading on the percentages scale.

Multiples beyond belief

A senator will take 735% in allowances beyond his basic salary monthly with 200% going to housing and 250% going to managing a constituency office.

If the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) deductions total more than the basic salary, you then wonder if the allowances are taxed too.

Besides this, the vehicle loan is 400% of annual basic salary, but if a term is 4 years, how does a senator pay off that loan without seeking extra funds over and above the salary?

It would mean the legislator will would have either to meet that from the allowance pool or engage in other business activity to meet possible shortfalls, this remuneration structure is uneconomical and presents the framework for nefarious activity, possibly corruption.

Not sustainable

What does not show in this salary payslip is the furniture allowance, which is 75% of annual salary paid in a lump sum at the commencement of legislative tenure and 5% for housing allowance.

We still need to get a current figure representing what we pay our legislators but in percentage terms with reference to the basic salary, it is unlikely as I have said before that any private sector job rewards people this well, this democracy at this rate and cost is unsustainable.

Other reading

Nigeria: How much do we pay our lawmakers? - Part I

Nigeria: The relative cost of our democracy is unsustainable – AkinBlog.nl

Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) – About page.

Senator earns N12m yearly, says RMAFC – The Nation

Certain Political, Public and Judicial Office Holders Salaries and Allowances etc, (Amendment) Act of 2008

Nigeria: How much do we pay our lawmakers? - Part I

How much do we pay our lawmakers?

Getting round the inscrutability of the remuneration for Nigerian legislators has been a completely fraught exercise that none of the organisations with the function of regulating such appear to have a handle on.

However, when the Economist blew the lid off the exorbitant salary packages of the Nigerian Senators a few weeks ago as I wrote in this blog [1], the uproar that followed especially on social media meant that it was impossible to ignore and something had to be done.

A moribund commission

The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) [See their About page here[2]], is empowered to:

"Determine the remuneration appropriate to political office holders, including the President, Vice-President, Governors, Deputy Governors, Ministers, Commissioners, Special Advisers, Legislators and the holders of the offices mentioned in Section 84 and 124 of the Constitution."

They have through this news story [3] gleaned from a newspaper advertisement released some information regarding the salaries of the Nigerian legislators but we are left with many more questions than what this red meat to the dogs of dissent was supposed to sate.

A guesstimate at best

Whilst the figures published by the Economist might be in dispute, the Economist asserts that their figures are for 2013, whereas the figures released by the RMAFC are in their words, ‘has been the official remuneration package since February 2007 till date’, which makes one wonder whether the salaries and allowances of our legislators have remained the same for 6 years despite inflation, the global financial crisis and two elections – that stretches the limits of incredulity, it really does.

Now, the Commission has taken it upon itself to do the following:

“Accordingly, the Commission, therefore, considers it most appropriate and necessary to provide the actual details of present remuneration package for political, public and judicial office holders to avoid misinformation and misrepresentation of facts capable of misleading citizens and members of the international community.”

They don’t really know

And what do they have?

“According to the RMAFC, the emoluments for ministers, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Head of Service and Chairmen of Constitutional Bodies are close to those of the Senators …”

One might read that to mean they do not have the actual figures because, they reference that the “Certain Political, Public and Judicial Office Holders Salaries and Allowances etc, (Amendment) Act of 2008, states the actual amount being paid to legislators and other public officers, adding, however that “any other allowance (s) enjoyed by any political, public office holder outside those provided in the Remuneration Act of 2008 is not known to the Commission and the Chief Accounting Officer should be held accountable””, I guess that means they really do not have all the information.

That is because, the said, Certain Political, Public and Judicial Office Holders Salaries and Allowances etc, (Amendment) Act of 2008 [Viewable here as a PDF [4]] does not include the salaries of the any of the legislators, however, we have a general idea as to why seeking political and public office in Nigeria is quite a lucrative career move.

I commiserate

I can understand what Zakari Mohammed, the spokesman for the House of Representatives meant when he said, “Whatever is being written is mere exaggeration and does not reflect what is accurate. They fail to realise that what we take as salaries is different from what we use in running our offices.” Even accounting for what it takes to run an office, that would mainly be staff and other outgoings amounting to about 250% of basic salary with about 550% of basic salary in allowances to pocket. It still begs the question, what is accurate?

Then the RMAFC concludes with, “It is, therefore, wrong and misleading to add up allowances irrespective of whether they are regular, refundable or non-regular, as the regular annual emoluments of political and public office holders.”

Honestly, RMAFC, if we were to add all that into the mix, the Nigerian Senator remuneration package will come to an eye-watering 1,505% of basic salary, and the other 225% for furniture? It breaks the bank to smithereens – Nice work if you can get it, I say.

The table of the Nigerian Senator Salary Package

The table below was derived from the figures supplied by the RMAFC [3] and as far as accuracy is concerned, they are only as good as 2007.

[1] Nigeria: The relative cost of our democracy is unsustainable – AkinBlog.nl

[2] Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) – About page.

[3] Senator earns N12m yearly, says RMAFC – The Nation

[4] Certain Political, Public and Judicial Office Holders Salaries and Allowances etc, (Amendment) Act of 2008

Nigeria: The relative cost of our democracy is unsustainable

This is too dear

I have written many times about the exorbitant and probably prohibitively unsustainable cost of the democratic experiment in Nigeria and there are many reasons to be concerned for how much we pay our lawmakers on average. [Nigeria: Our Exorbitant Government]

The graph below published by the Economist is more than just an eye-opener but it is also revelatory about how political office is a parasitic drain on the national resources since politicians cannot be considered part of the economic engine of a country.

What makes this graph worthy of the most righteous indignation begging for public insurrection is not so much about what the politicians earn, but the gap in earning capacity between the citizen and the representative lawmaker.

The comparisons

Australian lawmakers earn the most at $201,200 followed by Nigeria at $189,500 and then Italy with $182,000 and the United States at $174,000 all compared to the people they represent, we find that Australian and American lawmakers earn less than 4 times the average economic activity of their countries divided by their populations (GDP per capita), Italians just about double that and Nigerian lawmakers earn 116 times that.

The World Bank, the IMF, the CIA and the University of Pennsylvania all put the GDP per capita of Nigeria at between $2,661 ranking 137^th in the world out of 180 countries, $2,720 ranking 143/187, $2,800 ranking 148/194 and $1,716 ranking 152/185 respectively.

By comparison Australia is in the top 10 thrice, Italy in the top 30 twice and then the top 35 and the United States of America 4 times in the top 10, it goes without saying that Nigeria has no business paying its legislators in what is purportedly a representative democracy these atrocious amounts of cash that bilk and milk the country without contributing anything to its economic growth.

The consequences of expensive democracies

Worse still, it creates a competition for political office where the rewards far outweigh the commensurate perspiration leading to many situations where power-grabs by every means possible warps every notion of free and fair elections, talk less of representative democracy – it is utterly bad for Nigeria apart from the fact that it is unsustainable.

Looking at the chart again, you also wonder why Sub-Saharan African nations that hog the bottom third of GDP per capita tables are the ones that take the lead by far in the discrepancies between elected and elector besides the fact that only Ghana has consistently rewarded its electorate with the will of its people, Kenya did not in the penultimate election which has the current leadership indicted for crimes against humanity and Nigeria is a travesty in everything but name.

Nigeria is awash with oil money in the wrong hands which is used in acquisitive, ostentatious, hedonistic and wanton display of power, wealth, influence and mischief, it exacerbates a pressure cooker of ethno-religious and regional tensions, none of which the leadership have had the wherewithal to grapple with or understand that the consequences as it holds together with threadbare allegiances of snouts in trough might well be dire for the 2015 election year.

Enough is just enough

In my humble opinion, this democracy is neither representative nor working if the people we choose to represent us are so far removed from the reality of the citizenry that they literally live in a parallel universe, there ought to be no reason for Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana to be democratic outliers compared to the economic activity within their regions in comparison to their people, it calls for reform and this must be urgent, radical, far-reaching and deeply examining of the culture of corruption and influence-peddling we have allowed to become the raison d'être of political life.

This is the one time when the chorus from the village to the city and from the homes to the marketplaces of the country should ring loud – Enough is just enough.

Other reading

Nigeria: Our politically immature systems

Nigeria: Percentage Allowance Legislators

Thought Picnic: Returnee Woes

This is pain

There is an interesting aspect of being a returnee that is quite uncomfortable and disconcerting. When you return home from another country after so many years away, the only thing you probably have is your identity and not much else.

The process of reintegration is being fraught by rules that do not seem to have exceptions. Resettlement is not easy and planning it depends on how you are able to leave where you were to where you want to be and the attendant responsibilities that come with it.

Soul destroyers

In my case, I am caught in a Catch-22 situation that is growing ridiculous by the day. Normally, on arrival in the UK one is to register as looking for work. My experience of the literally soul-destroying concept of being told you are not doing enough to find work that you are matched to jobs that demand nothing of you than to demean and depress you from over 20 years ago was job not what I needed at this time.

Recently, I read of the experience of a PhD holder expected to do menial jobs and not considered to be utilising his job-searching time productively if he was researching and preparing for interviews belying an inferior and pedestrian system in the UK whereas in the Netherlands they fully appreciated your skills and offered help and advice to job-seekers to help them flourish in what they really do know how to do.

Hitting the ground running

I arrived on a Friday and took temporary accommodation with a relation, by Sunday, I had obtained a mobile phone SIM and a new phone number that allowed me to update my CV with an address and number – enough to give it some freshness.

On Monday, I was getting calls and by Tuesday the inquiries were gaining traction that I landed an interview on Thursday after which I was offered a job, what had to follow were mere formalities – terms, contract and other essential personal details.

Proving an improbable

No one on entering a country within days is able to provide a proof of address in that country without exceptional circumstances to that effect. The social services will only consider a returnee habitually resident in the UK only after 3 months of arrival, before which that have no obligations though asylum seekers in dire need seem to get prompt attention.

I could not open a bank account without a proof of address and the company that was supposed to handle my payroll then said they will not release payments for my work until I could prove where I lived, however, I cannot claim many of the official documents like utility bills, job centre correspondence or government agency letters when I am in temporary residence still trying to find my feet.

Exceptionally unique circumstances

In essence, even though I am ready, able and engaged to contribute my bit to society, I am being treated like a homeless man, my independent streak to just get up and do not appreciated and there does not seem to be some exception to cater for people with my kind of unique circumstances.

The unintended consequence of anti-money laundering laws are hitting on honest and innocent persons ready to earn a living but frustrated by the system. Meanwhile, we read of looters of African treasuries washing their ill-gotten wealth through British banks with amazingly breath-taking ease.

Do something

I have put the onus back on my employer and Payroll Company, having offered my identification and met with their personnel, they know what I will be earning and it is unlikely that with the contracts I have signed with both, I can at the same time be an agent of money laundering at their behest.

What is required is a bit of common sense and intuitiveness on their part to validate my existence and facilitate my reintegration.

When I moved to the Netherlands over a decade ago, my employer stood as surety guaranteeing the necessity I had for opening a bank account and consequently securing rental property – that is what I am asking of them – the emails will go back and forth until I have gotten them to stand and stand tall on my behalf. I should not be agonising about these things, I want to concentrate on my new job and perform excellently in what I know to do.

Nigeria: The plight of unpaid but working Nigerians

Unpaid in employment

This issue has been on my mind for months but I have never really been sure of how to approach the issue as a topic for analysis and serious debate.

A conversation I had yesterday presented a framework on which to hang the views I have on this matter.

I just conducted a search on Google for “unpaid workers in Nigeria” and “unpaid salaries in Nigeria” and the results read like an atrocious abuse of the workforce that have been browbeaten and enslaved into situations they probably cannot think themselves out of.

The list of organisations that have defaulted in what should be a standard binding contract that has moral implications, humanitarian concerns, the serious responsibilities that have been shirked to the point that it should be considered criminal conduct is appalling.

Offenders everywhere

In April the staff of Mobile Telecommunications Limited (MTEL) were on strike on the issue of not being paid for 5 months [1], The Nigerian Football Association was owing a backlog for a Nigerian coach running back almost 6 years [2] before the arrears were cleared a few months ago.

Workers at Ajaokuta Steel Company Limited had not been paid for 6 months [3], basically, this abuse pervades all areas of business endeavour in the public, private and unregulated sectors of the Nigerian economy.

I do wonder how any business can thrive if the fundamental worker incentive of getting paid is not there, workers have to endure months to years of hope and despair, unsure of how to make ends meet as they travel to work each day unsure of if they would be kicked out unto the streets on the sudden collapse of their company and without recourse for just recompense.

Employer – employee disconnect

There may be the issue of companies that have not sorted out the billing and collection aspects of the organisation before embarking on any venture who having engaged in a contractual arrangement cannot even trust the paper on which the contract is written because business owners lack requisite honour and integrity to be trusted to do what is right.

There seems to be a disconnect before the needs for a business to continue as a viable concern and the need to maintain and improve the productivity of the staff to make the organisation even more profitable and efficient.

Imagine being a patient about to undergo a serious operation in a hospital where the doctors, the surgeons and the nurses have not been paid for months and consider the risk at which a life has been placed in the care of utterly demotivated people - this scenario should be easy to extrapolate to other business organisations.

Legislate for the right to get paid – on time

There is no reason for organisations in the public sector in an oil-rich economy like Nigeria’s to delay the prompt and efficient payment of salaries to their staff.

In the private sector, there has to be a requirement introduced to ensure that funds are available to cater for the staff they take on and where that pool of funds diminishes a commensurate realignment of priorities has to be implemented to cater for properly compensated lay-offs and properly remunerated packages for those retained.

It is time to stop this practice of keeping the faith for miracle payments that might come at some bye-and-bye future date – companies that cannot pay for services should not engage those services.

Long-suffering or stupid

One can say Nigerians are long-suffering in one sense and probably stupid in another, they are held hostage on a hope for change which does not have a term except that of continually unfulfilled promises to the extent that employers even brazenly to think they are doing their employees a favour, by having them work for free for ages without any clear prospect of when they would be paid.

Workers themselves seem to be willing and resigned to accepting this situation without question, they are numbed into compliance by numbers and under the threat that their are others who would even probably pay to be employed.

It is criminal, whatever way you look at it, that this business attitude thrives with impunity and there is no recourse for serious punitive sanctions on the owners of those businesses.

One wonders if an employee eventually finds employment elsewhere where the business appreciates its duty and responsibilities whether that employee would still be entitled to the accrued arrears owed by the former employer or that would be forfeited.

Politicians can afford to feel completely unconcerned about an aspect of business development that requires some inspired legislation that begins to protect the right to a salary promptly paid for work done – they have allowances and salaries unthinkable to the hapless workers who make up their electorate.

Work for lesser incentive

Unfortunately, whilst I refuse to add this issue to my Apes Obey! Series, it is evident from Lord Lugard’s assessment of Africans of Nigerian descent – “he will work hard with a less incentive than most races” and this salary arrears business takes this matter to the extreme, people are being taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers who take all the profits and leave their staff in servile bondage without pay.

The effect on society has not been measured at all, where those few who happen to have the little from getting paid suddenly take on extended family responsibilities to cater for others who still have to get to work, pay the rent, feed the family, manage their health and send their kids to school.

A man’s dilemma

Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, workers have responsibilities they cannot cater for because they are not getting paid and they have to contend with landlords, schools, doctors and other essential needs to keep body, soul and mind together.

We have reached a state where the ability to feel shame has been lost as everyone falls into debt as a means of scraping to survive – it must be a crime to employ without prompt payment and there must be sanctions that force business owners to forfeit assets to meet their responsibilities as employers.

Workers should not have to carry the blame for the mismanagement of the organisation or its funds; it should be fraudulent to have funds extracted from the organisation for other services when employers have not fulfilled their obligations.

Duty and responsibility of employers

Our society is fractured and broken because of these unconscionable activities and it is time to bring back the virtues of honour, integrity and binding contractual relationships that first define corporate social responsibility as a clear duty to employ within the means of the ability to pay.

There should be a perpetually binding requirement to pay up all arrears to existing and former employees or their named dependants before an organisation earns the respect of the markets and ratings that allow it trade without the anti-social sobriquet of employers being slave-traders in everything but name.

There should be an impartial ombudsman who monitors the corporate responsibility of firms with the power to force a delisting from the stock market, seize assets to pay up arrears, commit the principal officers to trial with sanctions that deprive them of their liberty and ultimately close the business or take it into administration with a management team that would turn things around.

At the risk of sounding socialist, we cannot pretend to be capitalist when the resources of production are press-ganged into communist sameness in the hope that feudal lords would be benevolent to the workers who have by default become slaves.

Sources

[1] allAfrica.com: Sourced from Vanguard - Nigeria: MTEL Workers Shut Down 200,000 Lines Over Unpaid Salaries

[2] BBC SPORT | Football | African | Chukwu demands unpaid salaries

[3] Daily Trust - the online edition - Ajaokuta Steel workers unpaid for six months

Nigeria: Percentage Allowance Legislators

Note: The original graphic in this blog has been lost and the link to the article which I originally sourced from the Punch newspaper is unfortunately dead. The point this blog makes is that legislators take away 1,260% of their basic salary in allowances for cars, clothes, entertainment, newspapers, holiday pay, accommodation and much else.

Allowances by huge percentages

The salary that goes with the plumiest job in the world has taken on rockets and flown right into the stratosphere. Over 4 years some people would be on this Orient Express gravy train living large in such opulence that is way beyond the dreams of their constituents.

Our lawmakers in the Nigerian National Assembly would be able to claim allowances equivalent to 1,000% of their annual basic salary possibly tax free as allowances to seek accommodation, furnish their accommodation, buy a vehicle and be dressed up to the nines.

Dress the legislator

Before we get to the figures, it is interesting that they are concerned about such minutiae as their wardrobe which for men would be flowing gowns 10 times the size of the wearer.

In a throwback to the colonial days of the District Officer they would have domestic staff that would include a steward, a cook, a housekeeper and a gardener.

They also get paid for being on recess and we can assume there are two recesses in a legislative year and we also pay for their newspapers.

Missing some essentials?

However, I think for legislators, a good deal of the important things necessary to be a legislator in the West are missing and I suppose that is because our legislators who would be walking on cloud 20 are not necessarily representatives of any constituency.

In the expenses scandals that have bothered UK Members of Parliament, one gleaned that a legislator usually requires an office, a secretary and possibly an office administrator, a number of researchers and usually a number of trips to manage constituency matters – I see no allowances that cover those aspects.

My suspicion is, beyond these allowances they would still be able to claim additional expenses to cover these matters along with a chauffeur for the executive vehicle.

Nice job, if you can get it

I know not of any job anywhere that offers this kind of largesse, ordinary people are usually supposed to pay for all these things out of their basic salaries.

It would be different if the legislators really get down to doing stuff that helps build Nigeria but with them fed and fattened to the extent that they would not be able to get out of their opulent furniture to walk through the widest doors on earth, this would be gravy-train par excellence and it grates.

Hike linked to inflation?

One cannot say why the total salary bill for our national politicians has been hiked by 31.67% from NGN 41 billion to NGN 60 billion because there has to be some economic sense to flooding the economy with an additional NGN 19 billion for work that is not even in any productive sector of the economy.

It might be that the legislators know something we do not, which is inflation in Nigeria is running at over 30% and really everyone should be irresponsibly be given a salary raise commensurate with the level of inflation.

Now we can look at the figures, over 4 years; a senator would earn NGN 2 million per annum plus the 1,260% in allowances that is NGN 8 million plus 12.6 times the annual salary (NGN 25.2 million), this would all come to NGN 33.2 million or $277,638.

Not representative at all

It might look small, but this is in a country where according to the World Bank, 90% of the population lives on less than $2/day which when summed up comes to $2,920 if the person did make $2 for every single day for four years.

It is then no surprise that electioneering is a fight to the death because there are few jobs that pay like this without extensive influence peddling.

The multiplier effect of the percentage allowance scheme is quite instructive because from another perspective it shows the multiples of ones salary required in getting these basic needs and hopefully the numbers were not just plucked out of the air.

Welcome to the plumiest job on earth, being a Nigerian legislator.