RMAFC: Salary review for elected politicians long overdue | Last time we did was 2007

The Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) says the salaries of elected politicians and judicial officers should ideally be reviewed every five years.

On Tuesday, Muhammad Shehu, RMAFC chairman, said the salaries will be increased by 114 percent.

Shehu said the move was in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 32(d) of part 1 of the Third Schedule of the 1999 constitution (as amended).

Speaking in an interview on Arise Television on Thursday, Hassan Usman, RMAFC federal commissioner, said the last time the review took place was in 2007.

“The review of this renumeration is supposed to be engaged upon by the commission every five years ordinarily. That has not been done for some reasons since 2007,” he said.

“That is to say this is 15 years the salaries for political, public and judicial office holders have not been reviewed.

“Now we did it. The consumer price index from 2008 to the year 2022 has increased by 371 percent. We didn’t review this salary by 371 percent, we engaged in public hearing.

“We went to all geo-political zones, we had consultations with stakeholders, the government and the private sector, hearing and harnessing views from stakeholders on what increment within these years is.

“The two indices, the public hearing which is subjective and then the scientific one, the consumer price index which is objective were combined, aggregated and it rounds up to over 200 percent.

“So, based on that, in view of the economic situation in the country, we aggregated the two and we arrived at 114 percent.”

The proposed review of the salaries of elected politicians and judicial officers has elicited angry reactions on social media, amid the removal of subsidy on petrol and rising cost of living.

Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the last elections, said this is not the right time to effect an upward review of salaries of members of the political class and judicial officers.

In a statement issued by Dele Alake, special adviser on communications to President Bola Tinubu, the presidency said: “We state without any equivocation that President Tinubu has not approved any salary increase, and no such proposal has been brought before him for consideration”.