Rotimi Fasan
The chair of the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission, RMAFC, Muhammed Shehu, is calling for the suspension of pension payment to former governors still in office as legislators or ministers. According to Mr. Shehu, many of these former office holders are still enjoying huge pension pay-offs in form of cash.
But it should be said that the actual worth of what many of these governors have as retirement perks is not best measured in cash but in terms of such ‘fringe benefits’ as covers for annual international holidays, medical and otherwise; salaries of such aides as cooks, cleaners and drivers, etc; furniture allowance, houses in choice areas of our cities, including the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
Yes, they have to be pampered with pieces of real estate in Abuja even when these individuals’ territories as office holders never extended to Abuja and they were governors of their different states and not Minister of the FCT. In addition to their Abuja houses they are offered the benefit of brand-new cars purchased at periodic intervals of about three years.
All of these are the known benefits. There are surely many more that are unknown and are not for public consumption. The call for responsible behaviour with regard to payments of pension to former public office holders presently occupying public office is not new. Nigerians have for long wondered where the greed came from that justified such egregious payment to a set of people who are already earning far more than they would ever deserve or need for doing a job many Nigerians are increasingly persuaded should be available only on a part-time basis.
What’s the justification for such payment for a job that lasted eight years at the most while Nigerians with more than 35 years of service are paid a few hundreds of thousand naira or one to two million naira for a lifetime of service. What is anyone doing roaming the streets of Abuja or spending less than half of the time the National Assembly is in session pretending to be occupied with making laws or serving as ministers?
What is often noticeable in the empty seats that stare at the onlooker whenever the National Assembly is in session, to take one notorious example, is the fact that the jobs that many would break their limbs and kill to get are not important enough to engage the many dignitaries, so-called Distinguished, that populate the National Assembly. They are hardly ever present for the job at hand and when they are present, they are either dozing in their seats, impervious to proceedings around them, when they are not plotting how to unseat their leaders; or listlessly making phone calls amid what should be discussions about important issues of governance and legislation.
It’s been weeks since members of the National Assembly received Godswill Akpabio’s “prayers” in their mail boxes, and since that time the most consequential thing we’ve heard from the National Assembly is about clandestine plots by disgruntled members of the National Assembly to impeach the President of the Senate and other ranking members. And why is this so?
Simply because some of these members felt they have not received as much as they deserve by way of patronage from their leaders. They want so-called juicy positions as chairs of powerful committees and feel disrespected that this has not happened. The drain that their huge pension payments constitute to the national economy is obviously not any concern of theirs. What is important to them is how they can continue to increase their account balance even if the rest of Nigerians have no idea where their next meals would come from.
Yes, I said the call for the suspension of the pension benefits of former office holders is not new. What is new is that the latest call is coming from Mr. Shehu whose organisation only last week rejected any claim that political office holders are being overpaid. Perhaps, he is only being fair to all by making this call that none of those directly concerned with it want to hear anything about. If he didn’t see what the problem is with the salaries of the legislators, he shouldn’t be silent about what amounts to a rip-off of the commonwealth. Most of the former public office holders guilty of this immoral act of claiming double payments are former governors who have turned the National Assembly, specifically the Senate, into their retirement home. As many of them started their second term in office, they got their state assemblies to enact legislations that awarded them pension benefits greater than a king’s ransom.
Nigerians like to gripe about a National Assembly that is considered an appendage of the presidency. Those currently up in arms against Akpabio are angry at what they call his uncritical pandering to the wishes of President Bola Tinubu. They call his, a rubber stamp Senate. This was the same way Nigerians described the ninth National Assembly led by Ahmed Lawan who made no bones about his readiness to do the bidding of the executive provided President Muhammadu Buhari would be the beneficiary of such support.
The real rubber stamps are the state assemblies that function, not just as appendages of the governors’ office but in fact operate at the pleasure of the governors. The governors are the be-all and end-all of politics in the different states they govern. A major pillar of their strongholds are the state assemblies. They are no better than the local government authorities where nobody dare ask the governors any question about what violence they are inflicting on the monthly allocation of the local government authorities. Those who dared to ask questions like Wale Adedayo, the chair of Ijebu East, are now out in the cold, dejected and rejected by their own colleagues who cannot understand why they had to speak when everyone else was content to be silent.
The same silence that has surrounded what these governors are doing with the N5 billion released to them for the provision of palliatives for poor Nigerians rendered poorer by the removal of oil subsidy. But for Gbenga Daniel, himself a former of Ogun State and now a serving senator in Abuja, Nigerians had no clue that the monthly allocation had been increased. It was after he mentioned it that Nigerians knew of the conspiracy of silence around the issue. It was the same Daniel who spoke to suggest it was wrong for former office holders to enjoy pension in addition to perks of their current office. Is it any surprise it’s his wife’s property that was destroyed by the same man that has done for Wale Adedayo? President Tinubu can and should do something now although he’s himself is a former governor.
Vanguard
