The politician said that anytime lawmakers visit their constituency, they’re bombarded by their constituents with personal issues like school fees.
Senator Ibikunle Amosun says Nigerian lawmakers earn bogus allowances to run their offices and also meet the various needs of poor begging constituents.
“I’ve been opportune to be a Senator between 2003 to 2007. After that, I returned to the Senate in 2019. I’ve now seen that what people say lawmakers earn is much. It could be much actually. But when we do comparison with other countries; what we provide for ourselves, lawmakers in other countries don’t provide for themselves.
“That’s why it seems what Nigerian lawmakers earn is much. That’s it. Like me, there is no week I don’t come to Abeokuta. Some lawmakers cannot go home because, look now, by the time you go outside you will meet 30 to 100 people who came for help, saying “my children want to go to school, I want this, I want that,”” Mr Amosun said.
Disclosing this in an interview with BBC Yoruba on Monday, the former governor of Ogun State lamented that salaries and allowances of some federal lawmakers don’t last them one week due to various demands from their respective constituents.
“In Nigeria, people see politicians as the go to. Why? Because some politicians, before they assumed office, had nothing. So when people see that once he assumed office he is now rich, he becomes where everyone will go for help. That’s why whatever lawmakers earn does not last one week in their hands. That’s it,” Mr Amosun said.
Bogus salaries and allowances of Nigerian lawmakers has been a recurring issue whenever cost of governance is being debated. However, the exact amount a lawmaker earns in salaries and allowances remains a secret.
Senator Shehu Sani once revealed that each lawmaker gets close to N13 million every month as allowance, a revelation that further fuels suspicion that Nigerian lawmakers are among the highest paid in the world.
