Monday, March 02, 2009

Public servants pay

The refusal for public-servants to disclose their salaries in Nigeria (see here) is just a little bizarre. We now know that Reps get N35m per quarter in "constituency allowances" (see here) with apparently no checks and balances on how the money is spent. Scarcely believable, yet true. One would have thought that in a functioning democracy, there should be transparency on how much legislators and other officials of government are paid (including full disclosure on all allowances), and that this information is freely available. Audits (undertaken by reputable auditors) on the way the constituency allowance is spent would also be an expected part of the process. With the government admitting last week that there are 40 million people unemployed in Nigeria, there is much work to be done in terms of job creation and poverty reduction. Are the legislators value for money in this respect?

3 comments:

M,  3:58 pm  

So it is not me going crazy then. I read that interview and I thought what a rambling fool. How can a public servant refuse to declare how much he is earning. Pay structure of other public servants from lecturers to perm secs are well known and available for whoever wants to know. Only thieves like him would refuse to say what his salary. He doesn't even have to provide the exact figure. He could just give us the pay scale and that'd be better than the nonsense he is spitting out.

all I can say is that Nigeria deserves all these fools. Until we rise up and demand for more accountablity, fools like this one will have no place to go.

AS,  8:07 pm  

FOI - Freedom of Information Bill - The legislators are trying to kill or make it impossible to gain access to information. The more we know the more accountable we hold them. Most Nigerians are concerned about wealth/job creation and poverty reduction schemes. FOI is the least on their mind and cannot be bothered to campaign against the FOI in its form in the House. However, FOI is the KEY.

In my head and around me 10:07 pm  

They get what!? That is about an MIT graduate's yearly pay. No wonder they are practically killing themselves to get the positions.

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