The Chairman of the Conference of Nigeria Political Parties, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, on Wednesday said the jumbo pay for the National Assembly members was unjustifiable.
The CNPP chairman attributed the high domestic debt and the depleting foreign reserve to the jumbo pay of lawmakers and government's mismanagement of public funds.
He said, "What members of the National Assembly collect is related to the misuse of the budget which has led to increase in domestic debts because what has been budgeted for the National Assembly is over spent. "To keep the National Assembly under the control of the Executive, more money leading to increased domestic debt will have to be taken. Indirectly also, the foreign reserve could also be depleted to service some of these selfish agenda.
"It does not really make sense that a country which foreign reserve is depleting and local debt increasing will be servicing this kind of expensive National Assembly. The only reason they do this is because of the level of corruption in the system."
Also, Chairman of the Osun State chapter of the Anti-Corruption Resolution, a volunteer group set up by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to monitor corruption in the grassroots, Chief Amitolu Shittu, said if the Federal Government remained insensitive to the high costs of maintaining the National Assembly, the country's economy might collapse.
He said, "The problem is not unconnected with the amount we are using to service each member of the National Assembly that is too enormous. In the House of Representatives for instance, outside the principal officers whose allowances are bogus, each member gets at least N15m monthly. This system is bound to collapse the country's economy."
The Managing Director of the World Bank, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala had during the 2010 World Bank/International Monetary Fund annual meetings in Washington DC, said Nigeria must curb its domestic debt to prevent unfavourable consequences.
Okonjo-Iweala, a former finance minister in Nigeria, who played a major role in the country's 2005 Paris Club debt relief deal, noted that the country's external debt was low enough at its current level.
The Debt Management Office said recently that Nigeria's total public debt had risen by 21 per cent in 2009 to $25.8bn, which represented 13.8 per cent of the country's Gross Domestic Product.
Punch
Mudiaga Affe
Thursday, October 21, 2010
