Nigerian Lawmakers Earn Twice As Much As Buhari

Nigerian lawmakers are among world’s top paid legislators in the world, earning more than twice as much as Muhammadu Buhari is supposed to get as the President of Nigeria.

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Nigerian legislators earn much more than British MPs and more than twice as much as Muhammadu Buhari is supposed to receive as the President of Nigeria. Muhammadu Buhari’s annual presidential salary is N14,058, 80 – approximately equal to $70,000.

Statistic data shows that now Nigeria‘s GDP per capita is 50 times lesser than the average annual income of the Nigerian lawmakers.

In fact they used to be the highest paid lawmakers in the world, earning $189.5 thousand annually – even more than their American colleagues, earning only $170 thousand a year, until dropping oil prices started to weaken naira’s exchange rate.

In 2013 the salary of the US legislators exceeded American GDP per capita less than four times, while Nigeria’s lawmakers pay exceeded Nigerian GDP per capita 116 times.

At current naira’s exchange rate lawmakers in Nigeria still earn hefty sums of around $160 thousand a year, while British MPs get annually only $105 thousand.

It means that due to the economic crisis Nigerian lawmakers have become so poor that they can be named only second highest paid lawmakers in the world after American legislators.

Still, according to the recently passed 2015 budget, the National Assembly of Nigeria is about to get from the treasury as much as N120 billion – the sum equivalent to $0.6 billion.

Despite the decrease in funding the budget of the National Assembly budget still surpasses the annual budgets of 21 of Nigeria’s 36 states including Jigawa, Benue and Katsina, each of them populated with more than 4 million people.

And many of those people manage to survive on less than $2 a day, while minimum monthly wage rate in Nigeria is approved in 2011 by the Senate at level of N18000 – or $90.

Campaign to collect signatures under demand to open up National Assembly’s opaque budget has started on site change.org. The purpose of this campaign is to urge the National Assembly to open up to Nigerians how its N600Bn budget was spent in the last four years.