Senate Confirms N13.5M Monthly Allowance to Senators

Segun Atanda/

The Nigerian Senate has confirmed Senator Shehu Sani’s claim that each lawmaker at the National Assembly receives =N=45 million quarterly allowance.

Arguing that the information about the emoluments of senators was never a secret, the Senate spokesman, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, revealed at the weekend that the figure which Sani gave out about running cost of the offices of Senators were contained in various line items and expenditure heads of the budget of the National Assembly which has been made public.

According to him, Sani did not disclose anything new.

Sani who represents Kaduna Central disclosed the figure and the N700,000 salary of senators in an interview with The News magazine.  The interview was published last week, triggering social commentaries about the Senators’ ‘well kept secret’.

Abdullahi dismissed any insinuations that Sani’s colleagues were unhappy with him and said if people had looked critically at the budget of the National Assembly which has since been made public, they would have seen that various line items like travelling , medicals, consultancy and the rest were captured in the budget and they were the funds divided for each Senator’s use.

“Almost all holders of elective and appointive offices have running costs allocated to their offices and that cannot be said to be part of their salaries,” Abdullahi stated.