Double pay
•Ex-governors drawing salaries as senators and ministers are cheating the nation
Former governors who manipulated the state legislatures to award mind-boggling post-office emoluments for them have drawn the ire of the public for drawing full salaries again as senators and ministers. In a country where poverty and squalor are the order of the day, and unemployment ravages the land, the former governors managed to corner so much public resources to take care of them and their families long after they would have left office. That alone is enough to provoke public outrage.
But, the latest revelation that they at the same time draw fat full salaries after making their way to the centre deserves a second look by Nigerians who should demand immediate amendment to the laws of the federation to forbid such self-serving practice. No less that 21 former governors and their deputies are now receiving double emoluments from the public coffers. It is unfortunate that many of them in the Senate have insisted that they find nothing wrong in the practice.
While it may be true that there is no law expressly forbidding the practice, it violates the public morality code. While in office as state chief executives, the governors signed into law provision for life pension that appropriates to them, in some cases up to N300 million annually. In addition, mansions in their states and the federal capital, choice cars replaceable within three years and fat allowances for domestic and security staff, are allocated to them. That is not all, in almost all the states, medical allowances, sometimes up to N100 million is earmarked for the first family even where the governor only served for four years.
Contrasted with the minimum wage in the country and the shambolic public health system to which civil servants and ordinary citizens have access, this obscene provision could be linked with the prevailing misery in the land.
However, the former state chief executives now in the Senate have sought to justify the payments on the ground that it is the universal practice to take good care of anyone who had occupied such offices, that it is in accordance with laws promulgated and to which the public had the opportunity of contributing at public hearings, as well as the need to accept that the two offices are at different tiers of government.
The Code of Conduct Bureau Act leaves no one in doubt as to the intendment of the law on drawing benefits from the treasury. It states in section 2 (a) that a public officer shall not “receive or be paid the emoluments of any public office at the same time as he receives or is paid emoluments of any other public office; or (b) except where he is not employed on full time basis, engage or participate in the management or running of any private business, profession or trade; but nothing in this sub-paragraph shall prevent a public officer from engaging in farming.”
We support the coalition of 40 Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) that sued the 36 governors, 36 state assemblies, the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) and the Attorney-General of the Federation seeking to nullify the pension laws promulgated by the states Houses of Assembly for being inconsistent with provisions of the RMAFC and CCB Acts. The fiscal commission, in exercise of the power conferred on it has set out the remuneration that each office holder could draw while in service and at the point of disengagement. What is due the governors at the end of their tour of duty is no more than 300 percent of their basic salary as severance pay. All the additions, the coalition contends, are illegal and unsustainable.
We wonder where the state governments drew inspiration for the provisions as it was not the case in either the First or the Second Republics.
President Muhammadu Buhari or his attorney-general should speak out on this abuse of privilege. It is one occasion when silence is not golden. We restate our position that impunity must stop in Nigeria.