One issue currently generating controversy in the country is the proposal by the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) to increase the salaries of political office holders by 114 percent. Expectedly, this development has provoked criticisms of the government with many people seeing it as yet another testimony to our leader’s selfishness and insensitivity to the plight of the ordinary citizenry.
But to set the records straight, the salary increment proposal predated the Bola Tinubu government; it was birthed in the twilight of the Buhari administration, but apparently commanded less public attention due to the sweeping excitement over the oncoming general elections. I still remember the chairman of the RMAFC, Mohammed Bello Shehu, justifying the proposal on a national television including by pointing out that it has been several years since salaries of political office holders were reviewed irrespective of changes in the socio-economic realities.
First of all, let me state that I find nothing ordinarily outrageous about the salaries of political office holders. If what is taken home at the end of every month is only their salaries, no one would find such abnormal. The monthly salary of the president of Nigeria stands at around 900 thousand naira. What Nigerians are rather scandalised about are the outlandish allowances and other entitlements going into the already fattened pockets of these supposed public servants. This is besides the stupendous illegitimate earnings steadily enjoyed by them. In all this, our federal legislators easily come to mind with many Nigerians believing that this arm of our government is indeed a veritable conduit for plunder.
It must be stated here that no matter whatever justification for the proposed salary increment, it amounts to pigheaded insensitivity for the RMAFC or anybody else to be talking about salary increase for political office holders when all hands should be on deck to see what can be done to urgently halt the fatally worsening socio-economic woes of common Nigerians. The generality of the masses have been earning incomes that are hardly enough to sustain life at its most basic manifestation. For those of them employed by the state, minimum wage has never supported minimum standard of living even as the purchasing power of our currency relentlessly dwindles over the years. Throw in petrol subsidy removal, the full dimension of the quagmire becomes completely evident to you.
Against this backdrop, it amounts to mindless adding of salt to injury for the RMAFC to be proposing salary increment for politicians on the basis of rising cost of living when their less privileged compatriots have persistently been told to understand and be patient whenever they complain of the same hardship. If the nation does not have money to make life easier for its citizenry in the face of growing hardships, then no group of citizens should be singled out for preferential treatment for the reason of their sociopolitical status. Everyone should be treated equally, otherwise our nation can be legitimately accused of state slavery. Besides, if we are to strictly comply with the principles of social justice and state welfarism, times of economic difficulty demand that priority be given to the well-being of the poor and the most vulnerable. The wealthy and the privileged are the ones to be told to understand and be patient. But then state justice is far from being part of our agenda as a nation.
On the contrary, state injustice has clearly engraved its name on our practice of public remuneration in Nigeria. The earnings of political office holders, when juxtaposed with those of many other Nigerians toiling daily in different sectors to keep our nation going, show nothing but a veritable case of all animals are equal but some are more equal than others. Furthermore, the toiling ordinary Nigerian, as against the political office holders, is made to take care of his working expenditure from his meagre earning. As a civil servant, he does not enjoy the privilege of official cars (which in the case of office holders are sometimes fueled and repaired at the expense of the state). Similarly, that teacher in that public primary, secondary or tertiary school does not have a laptop computer or stationery provided for him for his work. On the contrary, some public office holders like the president and governors, in addition to these workplace provisions, have their household expenses taken care of by the state. They don’t have to spend on their family meal, laundry, and security. They don’t even have to spend feeding and entertaining their private guests. Everything is provided by the state. It is now common knowledge that the budget for running the domestic aspect of the Nigeria’s presidency runs into billions of naira annually. This does not include billions spent on car convoys and air travels (including for private engagements by the office holders and their families). In defending the controversial salary increase, the RMAFC boss, Mohammed Shehu, has argued that no public servant should earn higher than the president (as is currently the case with executives of agencies like the CBN, the NNPC, the top echelons of the military and police as well as the heads of federal universities); however, he apparently did not consider the fact that the president spends absolutely nothing of his private earning to carry out his official duties, and that even his private household living is the responsibility of the state. So, technically no one has been earning more than the president and none can in future!
The insane inequality and injustice that undergird public service reward in Nigeria becomes even more glaring when the outrageous severance packages and pensions earned by the office holders after just four or eight years in power are compared with the ridiculously meagre gratuities and pensions which the ordinary Nigerian worker is entitled to after 35 or more years of toiling with less than living wages. The president and state governors readily come to mind here. General Abdulsalami Abubakar, in his last decree in office.(signed May 28, 1999), made it a matter of law that former heads of state will have their expensive lifestyles funded by the state for life. Many state governors have followed his example, and some even exceeded his standard.
Then, besides the comparison between what political office holders earn and what ordinary Nigerian workers earn, there’s also clear injustice in the wage structure among Nigerian workers. Some workers in “special” establishments like the CBN and NNPC are treated glaringly differently from others for no apparent reason. For example, the salary of a worker at the entry level at CBN competes with that of a university professor irrespective of the vast gap in qualifications and experience. For this reason, getting a job at these “elite” establishments is something of a great privilege in the country. No one gets it without sufficient pulling of strings. Notwithstanding this glaring contradiction, no one seems to be in a hurry to explain to Nigerians why a teacher at a state government secondary school will see his erstwhile student, just after four years, earn something close to his teacher’s one year pay merely for being privileged to work at the CBN, and why a university professor will see his former student, just fresh from school, earn almost the same amount as his lecturer, not for any additional qualifications or job experience, but for simply being an employee of the NNPC. The fact that even a senior government official, Chris Ngige, in one of his last interviews as the labour minister, admitted that he found this wage structure unexplainable, is instructive of the apparent absence of any ideological wisdom in its invention. Ngige, in this interview, suggested a uniform wage structure for government workers in the country to eliminate these contradictions.
I would align with his suggestion but not without some modifications. First is that this uniform wage structure should cover everyone, from the president to the least civil servant at the local government level. There should be no discrimination between workers and political office holders. Second, while the basic salary should be uniformly scaled across services, allowances should differ according to circumstances of each sector meaning that people like the president and other public officials whose living cost is fully or partly borne by the state should earn much lower than ordinary workers who have to fund their living from their earnings. Third, the allowances of ordinary workers should take care of all their working expenditures to end the discrimination in the current arrangement. Thus, someone like me who teaches in a public higher institution should have my laptop, internet data subscriptions, conference attendance (locally and internationally) and publication costs fully included as part of my allowances. These should of course add hundreds of thousands to my current monthly earning.
The foregoing suggestions represent nothing strange; rather it is a mere call for justice. Everyone is expected to deliver to the optimum on his job, whether he is the president or a primary school teacher; so there is no logic or any modicum of justice in providing the president with all resources and motivations he requires to succeed while denying same to a primary school teacher, nay putting all sorts of obstacles in his way to ensure he fails. It is a common belief that all Nigerians should contribute their best to the development of their nation, but then the reality is that while a few are given all they require to give their best, the generality of the masses are left to figure out how to give their best in the face of overwhelming hurdles. May justice be done.
Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka, Nigeria.
