Senators on Wednesday rejected a proposal to cut their salaries and allowances, The Eagle Online has learnt.
The rejection of the pay and allowances cut came as the President of the Senate, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, postponed the debate on the report of the Adhoc Committee on the Review of the Finance of the Senate.
The Senate had on resumption of plenary session on Wednesday gone into a closed-door session.
It lasted from 11:26am to 12:50pm.
The focus of attention was their allowances and salaries, which had been scheduled for debate in the Wednesday Order Paper.
A source at the meeting told The Eagle Online that senators at the meeting said the National Assembly budget had been the only static budget for many years when other government agencies had been increasing theirs.
The source also added that the N120 billion in the National Assembly budget is not limited to lawmakers alone but all other agencies under the National Assembly.
AMong them are the Public Complaints Commission, the National Institute of Legislative Studies and National Assembly staff.
The source revealed further that senators during the closed-door session argued that their responsibilities keep on increasing in their various constituencies everyday because they need to pay the staff employed in their senatorial districts.
After the meeting, which lasted for over an hour, Saraki stood down the report of the Committee for further legislative input.
However, the Chairman of the Adhoc Committee on Media and Publicity, Senator Dino Melaye, told newsmen after the plenary session that the lawmakers are ready for a pay cut for the purpose of development of the country and had already indicated so in the 2015 appropriation budget.
Dino said: “Reduction of salaries of public officers by individuals is not new.
“The President has cut down his salary.
“The Vice President has done the same.
Governor Nasir El Rufai has done the same.
“It is the responsibility of the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Commission to stipulate how much you would be paid.
“But you can be sacrificial as a public officer to say: I am taking half of my salary and then taking half back to the treasury.
“It means that it would be returned back to the treasury where it would be used for other developmental programmes.
“What Nigerians are expecting from the Senate…the Senate would meet.
“The Senate, I repeat, deliberated on the report.
“The Senate is ready to make sacrifice for the purpose of developmental purposes and that had already been indicated even in the Appropriation Act 2015.
“For the past five years, the budget of the National Assembly has always been N150 billion.
“But the 2015 Budget of the National Assembly is N120 billion.
“Already, there has been a reduction of N30 billion in the budget of the National Assembly.
“And this N120 billion is to be shared among about six, seven organs of the National Assembly – the National Assembly Service Commission, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Institute, the Public Complaints Commission, amongst other arms of the National Assembly, including salaries and allowances of the legislative aides, numbering over 3,000.
“They are all inclusive.
“I have just said that the resolutions of the sitting today is that we would make wider consultations with the House of Representatives on the report because we have one National Assemb;y and whatever is going to affect the Senate, the House of Representatives should also be carried along.
“And I’m sure after this consultation, we’ll get back to the public.”
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