Why Senators, Reps members get N11m monthly aside salaries — RMAFC Chief

The Chairman of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), Alhaji Muhammed Shehu, has said the N11 million received by members of the National Assembly “are not salaries”.

He was defending the need to review the emoluments for political office holders.

Shehu claimed that political office holders in Nigeria do not earn outrageous emoluments as speculated by Nigerians.

Nigerians recently condemned reports on a proposed 114 per cent increase in salaries of political office holders by the commission, amid what they described as biting economic hardships in the country.

Shehu described information about the salary increase as not true.

“I know some people will say members of the National Assembly get up to 10 million or 11 million monthly.

“Those are not salaries, they are like operating cost of running their offices which in other societies the legislator does not have to see because there is a structure.

“Once you get elected, you make that structure from your constituency office to computers to logistics to the size of your constituency.

Shehu said: “wherever you have constituency office, the workers you hire, It is the National Assembly Service commission that is supposed to take care of that.

“But the Nigerian system allows the legislator to be given a certain amount and then he deals with that and retires the receipts,” the RMAFC chief said.