Reps: Deputy Speaker dismisses calls to slash lawmakers salaries

•says they don’t earn enough

By Christiana Ekpa with agency report

The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu, has said that the salary of the National Assembly members is not as much as Nigerians think and 50 per cent of it cannot be sacrificed to mitigate the suffering of the masses.
The Deputy Speaker who spoke on Channels TV program monitored in Abuja said it was wrong for Nigerians to think Lawmakers earn humongous salaries.
Acknowledged the severity of the crisis and emphasized the need for intervention, he however clarified that the nation’s lawmakers are not exactly immune from the hardship in the land.
He said: “Nobody is allowed to touch allowances, it’s your salary that belongs to you. Allowances have subheadings for things which they are meant for. If you use it wrongly, when you are retiring, you would be sanctioned for that.
“So talking about the salary of the members of the National Assembly, it’s far from what it’s supposed to be. And I can assure you that if you reduce it by 50%, it would not really impact the public.
“Based on current economic indices and the inflationary rate at the moment, what the members of the National Assembly are receiving cannot actively take them home to do their jobs in their various constituencies. So how could they cut their salaries by half?”