‘Economic challenges’ — RMAFC to postpone review of political office holders’ salaries

The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) says it will postpone the upward review of the salaries of political office holders in the country.

The RMAFC is a federal government agency responsible for mobilising and allocating revenue to the three tiers of government in Nigeria.

The commission also monitors the financial activities of the federal, state, and local governments to ensure that they are in compliance with the law.

In June, the commission said the salaries of politicians, judicial and public office holders will be increased by 114 percent.

Speaking in an interview with NAN on Sunday, Mohammed Shehu, chairman of the commission, said the postponement is due to current economic challenges in Nigeria.

Shehu said the last time the review took place was in 2007 and that political office holders do not earn outrageous emoluments as speculated by Nigerians.

“From 2008 till date there had not been any single review,” he said.

“Last year, some individuals took the federal government to court. These were some activists concerned about the salaries of judicial officers.

“In the court, the judge ruled that a judge should be paid about N10 million a month, that was the court ruling.

“We are Nigerians, we are not going to start talking about reviewing salaries of political office holders now because of the challenges that the government is facing.

“As a commission, we are going to do our work but we are not going to say we will do it now.

“We will do it when the climate is right and then we will take it forward to the stakeholders for them to decide on what to do.”

The chairman said what people considered as outrageous earnings of lawmakers were statutory office running costs which should be managed by the national assembly service commission.

“I know some people will say members of the national assembly get up to N10 million or N11 million monthly,” he said.

“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.

“Wherever you have constituency office, the workers you hire, It is the national assembly service commission that is supposed to take care of that.”