The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) has resisted the call by public and political office holders in the nation for the federal government to increase their compensation packages.
This was made known by Malam Kabiru Minjibir, the chairman of the NLC in Kano, on behalf of the zone’s NLC chairmen at the zonal public hearing on the review of the compensation package for those holding public, political, and judicial offices on Wednesday.
A review of this nature, according to Minjibir, is not required at this moment, when the nation is facing several economic difficulties.
He pointed out that if the government didn’t address the nation’s high cost of living and rising inflation, no amount of currency appreciation would be satisfactory.
The NLC leader pleaded with the Federal Government to temporarily halt the upward revision of the compensation package.
He further claimed that the National Bureau of Statistics’ (NBS) most recent poll shows that 133 million Nigerians are multidimensionally impoverished.
“The economic challenges confronting us today are unprecedented and it will be unacceptable for political officeholders to demand pay rise while Nigerians are battling with inflation.
“What we demand from them is an act of sacrifice by accepting salary or wage slash or reduction in solidarity with people of Nigeria,” he explained.
This was at an event organised by the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS).
He revealed that the total salary of a senator was about N1.5 million and N1.3 million for a member, House of Representatives. The average office running cost for a senator and a member of the House of Representatives is N13 million and N8 million respectively.
He pointed out that the budget of the National Assembly since 1999 had never gone above N150 billion, which accounts for about three per cent of the yearly budget.