Professor Itse Sagay, says he earns N200,000 per month as the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption while the four other members of the committee earn N160,000 per month.
Sagay, who has been at the vanguard of condemnation of outrageous allowances being earned by lawmakers revealed this while responding to a challenge to also revealed his own earning in the spirit of transparency by the Punch newspaper.
The Law Professor however insisted that Nigerian lawmakers are earning far above the N13.5m monthly running cost recently confirmed by Senator Shehu Sani.
“The information I am getting informally is that the NASS leaders are earning between N800m and N1bn as running cost every year. I don’t have concrete information yet, but from a very reliable source, that’s what I’m hearing. Once I have the concrete evidence, I will release it,” Sagay said.
He also defended by President Buhari and Vice President Osinbajo, arguing that unlike members of the National Assembly, they are not earning any form of extravagant allowance.
“I can confirm to you that the two are earning just their basic salaries, around N1.7m per month for the President and a little less for the Vice President.
“Anything else that is voted for their offices doesn’t go into their accounts. They don’t see the money.
“That’s the difference between them and the lawmakers. In the National Assembly, these people are handling cash.
He added that Nigeria is not yet ‘matured enough’ for former presidents like Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan who allegedly looted the treasury to be put on trial.
“It will take a long time, when we’ve developed and become more mature, to do that kind of thing. Right now, if you touch a former president, the storm that it will bring will be so diversionary and disturbing that it will affect your capacity to do positive things for the citizens. In my own thinking, you have to leave them alone and go for those who carried out the act of looting.
“There is a radical change in the government right now, but talking about the arrest of former presidents, I don’t think we are ripe for it.
“There will be too many sentiments; people will threaten to carry arms to defend their ‘son’. Nigeria is not an easy country.
“One must step as if one is on eggshell; do what you can do now, and suspend what you can’t do now because of our immature culture. Maybe this will change in the future.
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