“ Political Office Holders Consume N10 Trillion In 8 Years – Guardian Newspaper (Sunday July 10th 1999, Front Page).
World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) in a report released in 2006, ranked Nigeria among the most fragile countries due largely to escalating pauperization of Nigerian people, to chronic backwardness of the country’s economic, political and institutional process. Flipping deeper into the damnable report, the Independent Evaluation Group cited an increase in corruption and deteriorating governance as factors that endangered Nigeria’s existence.
Since 2006, when the IEG report was made public, has the so called owners of Nigerian nation done anything to reverse the movement towards a failed stated? No, never! What is obtainable in the system has been institutionalization of poverty and the gradual pauperization of the masses of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
The humiliating scenario is the fact that majority of the politicians that have succeeded in maneuvering their ways to elective positions within and across the nation have mastered the art of stealing public funds with impunity. Jeffery Robinson, an American Author of the book” “SINK” once averred the following about self seeking and irresponsible politicians in Nigeria:
“There are few places on the planet where corruption and political criminality has reached the unimaginable height that is in Nigeria. Since independence in 1960, it is estimated that as much as $600 billion has been siphoned out of the Nigerian treasury and moved into the off shore world for safe keeping by dishonest politicians.”
All said, but a new twist to political criminality was uncovered recently at the National Assembly in Abuja, where members of the Federal House of Representatives and senators of the senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria are scheming to unilaterally increase their take home pay in an astronomical manner in the midst of prevailing harsh economic and social realities.
Presently, each legislator at the House of Representatives collect 27.2 million per quarter (every 3 months), while every senator now receive 43 million per quarter. Right now, members of the House of Representatives want to take home about 47 million, which will mean that yearly they will be amassing up to N150 million each.
The Senators are equally eyeing about N100 million quarterly for their take home pay. Indeed, the “honourable” members of Representatives are looking at the House N6.3 billion capital vote in the 2010 Appropriation Act, which they are concluding plans to use to augment their allowances and entitlements. Specifically, the law makers are scheming to raise their entitlements from N9.8 billion to N15.1 billion, my figures here may not be entirely correct, but the crucial issue here is that of gross insensitivity on the part of the lawmakers in Abuja.
In a country where the bulk of the people are swimming in waters of excruciating poverty, where the welfare of the people is not a matter to be tabled on the agenda of our lawmakers in Abuja, it is a very sad and unhealthy development. Since the return of democracy to the country in May, 1999, the downtrodden masses have been at the receiving end of the political excesses of these bunch of cunning, unserious and fraudulent politicians.
This tragic development is nothing but display of reckless greediness and political criminality. What the Nigerian workers are taking home is not even a living wage, as most Nigerians are starving, and managing to meet ends meet, no safety net for Nigerian people; no social security, no nothing. Things are terribly bad in this country.
The global economic recession has forced many responsible and focused governments in Europe and America to be prudent about expenditure, some have even taken a step further to slash their salaries, arrears and allowances to accommodate the economy reality of the day. But, never in Nigeria where it is a sin to receive less pay for doing little or nothing (like the legislators in Abuja. The prevailing realities in our country calls for belt-tightening most especially by our ungrateful, short sighted and most conscienceless politicians who have succeeded in bastardizing the entire system by their deeds and action.
The mood of the nation is clear today: We must never allow these law makers to have their way this time around. Their present display of opulence in our streets is enough slap on our collective tolerance. Patriotic Nigerians must look at them unblinkingly and say defiantly that: enough is enough.
For once let President Goodluck Jonathan start something drastic by bringing all those involved in the Halliburton scandal to book immediately.
Until all sacred cows are made to cough out their loots, including all public officers that have looted our collective resources in the past, and those still stealing with biros are brought to book without compromise, political criminals will continue to dare us like what the law makers are perfecting.
That is why we must ensure collectively that all embezzlers of public funds are stopped through the polling booths via a sanitized electoral system.
Nowinta, a veteran activist wrote WHERE WE ARE.
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