Cost of running government in Nigeria unsustainable – Alex Otti 

The All Progressive Congress (APC) chieftain, Dr. Alex Otti, has noted that the cost of governance in Nigeria is unrealistically high, and clearly unsustainable given the country’s economic status.

Dr Otti who made the remark while presenting a paper at the 10th anniversary lecture of Adeleke University, Ede in Osun State on Tuesday, pointed out that one of the challenges Nigeria faces today is that governance gulps the bulk of revenue that ought to have been channeled towards more productive ventures.

Otti particularly noted that while Nigerian senators earn about $450,000 per annum, their counterparts in the United States, a much richer country, earn $174,000.00 per annum.

In the paper titled, “Massive Government, Miserable Populace: Cost of Governance as Economic Growth Decelerator,” Otti noted that, “From information available to the public, our federal legislators are amongst the highest paid in the world. Specifically, a study shows that they are the second to the highest earning worldwide. The only country that beats us is Singapore, a city-state that has one of the highest levels of income per capita, in the world.

“The reason for the high pay in Singapore is said to be to encourage professionals to participate in legislative functions. Everyone familiar with the matter agrees that the Singaporean civil service is arguably the most professionally run in the world.

“Again, America the model of our own democratic experiment, does not occupy a pride of place in countries with jumbo pay for their legislators. Before now, the compensation package of our National Assembly members was not in the public domain. There was not much to really depend upon except some veiled references to jumbo packages being enjoyed by members.

“The first authoritative source of information on this matter came from Senator Shehu Sani, the outspoken Senator, who represented Kaduna Central in the 8th Senate. Senator Sani had revealed that Senators went home with a monthly salary of N750,000.00 in addition to allowances of N13.5m per month. This represents a total package of N14.25m per month. He had also said that they were entitled to constituency projects of N200m per year which was domiciled in different ministries.

“Also not captured by Senator Sani are a few other allowances, which include furniture, car and severance packages for non-returning senators. Translating the numbers into dollars for purposes of comparison, our senators earn about…