Wastage of Funds: The Number of Aides of Saraki and Dogara Will Shock You

Reports have it that numerous aides are being attached to Nigerian lawmakers without definite portfolios and offices which is leading to the wastage of governmental funds.

 

The National Assembly management has requested the presiding officers to reduce the number of their aides by at least 60 percent as part of cost cutting measures, Daily Trust learnt yesterday.

Senate President Bukola Saraki and the Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara and their deputies have hired over 400 aides, sources said.
 

Saraki is said to have over 112 aides, Dogara about 170, Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu 60 and Deputy Speaker Yusuf Suleiman Lasun 58.

But the assembly bureaucracy has lately asked the presiding officers and their deputies to reduce the figures drastically.
 

Sources said Saraki and Dogara have been requested to cut down the numbers to 25 each while Ekweremadu and Lasun should have 17 each.

The aides are in three categories - Special Advisers (SAs), Senior Special Assistants (SSAs) and Special Assistants whose salaries range between N700, 000 to over a million naira each.
 

The special advisers earn about the same salaries as federal permanent secretaries while the others earn higher than directors in federal government establishments.

Daily Trust reports that two weeks ago over N10bn was paid as severance package to Senate and House legislative aides that served in the Seventh Assembly. The severance pay was 300 percent of their annual basic salary.
 

In January, the presiding officers met with the National Assembly management on how to cut down on expenditures.

Sources said the management intimated the presiding officers that they could not guarantee regular payment of salaries to such aides, especially when most of them were placed on higher grade levels.
 

Findings revealed that the salaries of all the political appointees have not been paid since January. It was gathered that the last time the aides collected their salaries was in December.
 

Most of the aides are said to have little or even nothing to do. They hang around the National Assembly complex or stay in their colleagues’ offices as they have no offices of their own.