A former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara has revealed that he received the sum of N25 million as monthly allowance when he was a presiding officer.
TheHintsNews reports that the jombo salaries of the members of the National Assembly has been a recurrent topic of discussion.
However, Dogara while speaking on Tuesday in Abuja at the open week of the House of Representatives, further revealed that as Speaker of the House, he earned N400,000 as monthly salary.
He stressed the earnings of members of the National Assembly have been on the front burner for a while even though their allowances cannot last them for more than three days.
He former lawmaker noted the misconception of huge salaries and allowances by Nigerians has given the National Assembly a negative image where they are called thieves even at public fora.
Dogara was of the opinion that the time has come for the National Assembly to throw open its finances to dispel the insinuation that the legislators were taking a humongous amount of money monthly.
His words: “While I was Speaker my salary was less than N400, 000. I don’t know if it has been increased now.
“My total impress was N25 million and I told my accountant to open a separate account for the impress and I never for once took any money out of that account. Everything that came into that account was used to cater for the needs of constituents.
“My accountant complained of the level of demand on the account and I told him if the money there is finished, borrow, when money comes, you return it to where you had taken money from.
“I am saying this so Nigerians will give their legislatures breathing space and know that the narrative is not true about members’ pay.
“We all know that democracy is expensive and if we think that it is too expensive, maybe we should ask our political scientists to develop for us, a local model that will be cheaper for us.”
Dogara told the lawmakers not to allow people bullying them into surrendering the current democracy for whatever reason while insisting that the collapse of rational conversation is the problem of democracy in Nigeria.
He said it was important for Nigeria to allow their representatives to work and limit the financial demands on them occasioned by the belief that they earn huge salaries and allowances.