What Legislators Don’t Earn

NIGERIANS have invested so much effort in discussing what
legislators earn that the bigger question about what they do is
rarely considered. This is not a debate on return on investment –
if resources deployed to legislators could be so addressed – but
an inquiry into what all arms of government do. Our grudges with
legislators are mostly personal.
We know them. We probably voted for them, possibly rigged for
them. They promised qualitative representation, also known as
“delivery of the dividends of democracy”. They said they were the
best hands for the job of making laws for the common good. What
is common good without tackling the bread and butter issues?
Before our eyes they prospered beyond our imagination, beyond
reason and ironically against the preachments that things were
tough, such that governments could not pay salaries to ordinary
workers. Even in States with crumbled economies, the legislators
got their pay. They would only be waiting for entitlements that
could have been delayed.
There are lots of reasons to be angry about the jumbo pay that we
hear legislators earn, but anger would not solve the problem, nor
the additional mischief of demonising legislators by spewing
salacious stories about money they do not earn, like the fabulous
figures mentioned as wardrobe allowances. A lot of advocacy is
required to engage legislators on their earning which was
established during the prudent presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo.
It is equally important that we sustain a more wholesome
approach to costs of running our governments. Is it not also
necessary to know how much we spend on the executive? Again,
what do people in government do for the much they earn? Are the
waste we are against only in the legislature? Could we look deeper
into other areas of mostly illegitimate earnings for the legislators
and the executives?
Illegal earnings are part of the corruption in the system. The
noticeable parts include enormously bloated government pay rolls
across the country, and a corrupt system that ensures that once
some names are triumphantly announced as ghosts and
expunged, more names are added to the lists, to join those who
were never discovered.
Entrenched interests count for more than the interest of the people.
As we fight over figures, there is still uncertainty about what our
“servants” earn while those they serve earn nothing in an economy
that has shrunk to the point of almost choking many Nigerians.
The fight to retrieve our country from self-serving interests should
be deeper than fighting over figures. Nigerians are in for more
fights than removing one government for another. There are too
many interests contending for Nigeria’s retracting resources.
When they hype salaries of legislators, they draw attention to one
section, while shielding sectors that they loot.

http/:www.vanguardngr.com/2015/06/what Legislators don't earn.

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