The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission is considering reviewing the salaries of political office holders in Nigeria.
This was disclosed at a press briefing in Abuja on Monday, August 18.
RMAFC Chairman, Mohammed Shehu, stated at the briefing that President Bola Tinubu presently earns N1.5m monthly, while ministers receive less than N1m — figures that have remained unchanged since 2008.
Shehu said: “You are paying the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria N1.5m a month, with a population of over 200 million people. Everybody believes that it is a joke.”
He added, “You cannot pay a minister less than N1m per month since 2008 and expect him to put in his best without necessarily being involved in some other things. You pay either a CBN governor or the DG ten times more than you pay the President. That is just not right. Or you pay him [the head of an agency] twenty times higher than the Attorney-General of the Federation. That is absolutely not right.”
However, the Nigeria Labour Congress kicked against the plans by the RMAFC to review upward the salaries of political office holders, saying the proposal ignores the country’s worsening inequality and the hidden perks that already inflate earnings in government.
At the press briefing in Abuja, the RMAFC boss stressed that the commission was not responsible for setting the minimum wage for civil servants or public sector workers, but was constitutionally mandated to determine the salaries of political, judicial, and legislative office holders.
“We are strictly restricted to political office holders, governors, senators, legislators, ministers, DGs, and other people,” he explained.
