RMAFC salary raise for public officers and the avarice of a nation’s leaders

• People who see public office as a perpetual meal ticket and avenue to acquire questionable wealth should not be holding public offices, and RMAFC should definitely not help them actualise their nefarious objectives, which portend danger for our nation.

Last week, the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), the body in charge of public officers’ salaries and allowances, announced plans to raise the minimum for public office holders, including the president, vice president and federal lawmakers. Expectedly, the announcement sparked uproar and condemnation among critical stakeholders and long-suffering and much-tried Nigerians who, under President Bola Tinubu’s administration, have continued to grapple with runaway inflation and an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis occasioned by the crippling neoliberal economic policies of his government. The men who man our public offices, especially the elected and appointed ones, while being shockingly poor at their job, are already some of the best paid in the world, even out-earning some of their peers in developed nations.

The reason RMAFC gave for the salary increase of the public officers, who many are even demanding a reduction in their take-home pay, is as pedestrian as it is insensitive. The agency claimed that current salaries are inadequate and unrealistic given the prevailing economic situation. However, available information does not support the claim of RMAFC. A senator in Nigeria earns a whopping ₦30 million monthly, while his counterpart in the lower legislative chamber, the House of Representatives, takes home ₦18 million monthly. Aside from the humongous take-home of the lawmakers, they still enrich themselves through other corrupt and illegal avenues like budget padding and perfunctory monetised oversight functions. With this publicly available information, one begins to wonder what the motive of the RMAFC is with the proposed upward salary for already overpaid public office holders?

Even more worrisome about this insensitive and callous proposal is the timing. It’s almost as if the nation’s leaders see Nigerians as worthless subjects whom they can treat with contempt and scorn. A couple of weeks ago, Nigeria’s health sector was grounded, and patients were left in a lurch, hoping what brought them to the hospital wouldn’t kill them after nurses embarked on industrial action over poor pay. Before them, doctors also downed tools over the pitiful take-home and abysmal condition of services. This is not the first time these hardworking essential health workers have had to embark on strike for better pay and improved conditions of service. Despite repeated industrial actions, the government has treated their demands with levity and empty promises of fulfilment. Aside from health workers, people who work in critical sectors of our economy are grossly underpaid. No professor in our federal or state University earns up to a million naira monthly.

Also, for a government that persistently harped on the need for the citizens to make sacrifices now by bearing the brunt of the brutal economic policies for future prosperity, its brazen display of flamboyance and utter lack of discretion and optics are deeply disturbing. While it wants the people to believe that the present state of lack and stagnation they are result of its appropriate and much-needed wholesale reconfiguration of the economy, it has behaved and carried itself in a manner that makes many question its intention and motive behind these economic decisions and policies as it’s not practicing what it is preaching. The right in your face kind of attitude displayed destroyed any hope they held about the government’s sensitivity to their plight.

While RMAFC is mulling raising the salary of overpaid, corrupt public office holders, many states across the country are yet to start paying the new minimum wage of ₦70,000 which not enough to weather the perilous economic storm, while many companies don’t even have the capacity to pay due to the toll the harsh economic reality is taking on their operations. It’s not too late for RMAFC to shelve this salary increase proposal as it’s not in the nation’s interest. Public office should be about public good and prioritising the nation’s interest which the proposed salary raise for avaricious public officers isn’t about. People who see public office as a perpetual meal ticket and avenue to acquire questionable wealth should not be holding public offices, and RMAFC should definitely not help them actualise their nefarious objectives, which portend danger for our nation.