N’Assembly Salaries: US spends less than 1% on congress

Posted by admin Headlines, Legislature Sunday, December 19th, 2010

Contrary to the situation in Nigeria where about 25 per cent of the nation‘s budget is used to service the National Assembly, the US official sources has put the cost of running the entire US congress, including salaries of senators and representatives, at 0.2 per cent of its federal spending, Empowered Newswire reports.

Recent assertion by the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria that about 25 per cent of federal spending was going to the National Assembly alone led to a wide-scale controversy which drew attention internationally.

A senior United Nations official queried, ”How can less than 500 people be receiving one-fifth of the nation‘s recurrent expenditure?”

For the 2010 fiscal year, Empowered Newswire gathered that the total federal spending on the US Congress – senate and house, came to $5.42B.

It was learnt that only $126M of that figure went to salaries and benefits of the senators and representatives.

The US government figures, based on increases made this year, shows that while the average Nigerian Senator receives an equivalent of $1.7m total package in a year and the federal representative collects the equivalent of $1.45m a year, the average US congressman, whether in the Senate or House of Representatives receive only about $174,000.

Also unlike in Nigeria, where senators and representatives take severance packages at the end of a term, the US representatives can only receive lifetime benefits after two and a half terms (five years).

But it is the Congress in the US that determines its own pay although the US constitution, in its 27th amendment, prohibits a change of salary from taking effect until after the next general election, except it is merely a cost of living adjustment.

US congress also adopts an annual adjustment procedure to increase its members‘ pay annually based on a 2.8 per cent adjustment.

The costs and standard of living indicators supplied by the World Bank indicates that members of the National Assembly in Nigeria are better paid than their colleagues in America even though the US is richer than Nigeria.

Prof Nimi Wariboko, a US based economist and former World Bank consultant said ”It is like a market woman in Lagos, paying her house help a better salary than what US billionaire Bill Gates pays his own house help in the US. The National Assembly salaries are that unreasonable.”

Another US based Nigerian banker, Bukola Oreofe, observed that ”It is obvious that the Nigerian assembly is an albatross on the Nigerian economy. Evidently, the practice of paying legislators constituency project allowance is a corrupt practice that is wrapped with disgracewp_posts