Angry aides
Aides to lawmakers of the National Assembly have again protested over unpaid salaries and other allowances.
This time, they took their grievances to the chairman of Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, EFCC – Abdulrasheed Bawa.
Asides from protesting over emoluments, the aides also accused the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, of diverting funds allocated for their salaries and allowances and mismanaging the legislative aides’ funds.
Also indicted is the Clerk of the National Assembly, Amos Ojo.
They also added that the lawmakers have since the last assembly, “treated them as slaves”.
Efforts to get the reactions of the Senate President and the Speaker were unsuccessful.
Their spokespersons did not respond to messages at the time of this report.
During the demonstration at the EFCC headquarters, the aides carried placards which listed their six demands – salary arrears, CONLESS implementation, minimum wage implementation, Duty Tour Allowance, training and conditions of service.
They also presented a petition to the EFCC detailing their complaints and demands.
In a copy of the petition dated February 14, 2022, the aides said the failure of the EFCC to act on previous complaints they lodged encouraged the National Assembly leadership to engage in financial malfeasance and misappropriation of funds meant for legislative aides of the ninth Assembly.
The allowances of legislative aides are duly captured in the National Assembly’s budget – which the Lawan-led Senate have failed to reveal.
“We are hereby alleging criminal diversion of these yearly appropriated legitimate entitlements by the Senate President and Chairman of the National Assembly, Senator (Dr.) Ahmad Lawan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. ‘Femi Gbajabiamila and the Clerk of the National Assembly, Arch. Amos Ojo because of their complicity in the mismanagement of the Legislative Aides account.
“Out of the 12 quarterly DTAs owed legislative aides of the nine per cent National Assembly since June 2019, none has been paid. Similarly, there has been no training activities for the past two and half years by management despite the budgetary allocations for these items, which were neither used for the said activities nor were they returned to government coffers as unused funds,” part of the petition read.
“The budget of the legislatives aides has always been N9.6 billion annually. The non-payment of these accumulated legitimate entitlements has turned legislative aides into legislative slaves.
“We have been pauperised to the extent that we are unable to meet our financial obligations like payment of school fees, hospital bills, house rents, debt serving, putting us into several embarrassing situations,” they said, adding that efforts to appeal to the leadership were unsuccessful.
They urged the EFCC to use its office to investigate this criminal diversion of their budgeted legitimate entitlements, bring the culprits to book and ensure the prompt payment of the allowances and arrears.
They further asked that the salary arrears, DTA and Minimum wage from January 2020 till date, be duly appropriated and paid, as well as transparency in the management of legislative aides’ account to avoid breach of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007.
Not the first time
The latest protest by the aides is one of many since the ninth assembly emerged. While some aides have demanded monies being owed from the previous assembly till date, others have focused on the ninth assembly.
Similar protests with the same demands have been held many times where they not only accused the National Assembly management of refusing to pay them for over six months, but also accused them of short-changing the few who were paid.
In the previous year Messrs Lawan and Gbajabiamila had met with relevant agencies of government led by the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, to discuss the non-payment of severance allowances for legislative aides who served in the National Assembly between 2015 and 2019.
“It is only fair that we give them what is due to them (aides). We realise there was need to bring on board for this discussion the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning and the National Assembly Service Commission as well, so that in this meeting we are able to discuss and finalise where the source of the severance allowance for the legislative aides will be,” Mr Lawan had said.
Copied in the latest petition are President Muhammadu Buhari, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, the Inspector General of Police, Director General, State Security Service and Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission.
Others are SSA to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), SERAP, Budgit, PLAC and Human Rights radio.
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