Dogara replies El-Rufai with 6 months pay slips

Twenty-four hours, after Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State released details of his salary, and challenged other governors, lawmakers and other p

Twenty-four hours, after Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State released details of his salary, and challenged other governors, lawmakers and other public office holders to do the same, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, on Tuesday night, released the details of his October 2016 to March 2017 salaries. The pay slips, which were released by his spokesperson, Turaki Hassan, revealed that Dogara’s total pay per month is the sum of N402,530.37. But his net salary, after deductions after tax, tallies at N346,577.87.

While his basic salary is N206,425.83, his constituency allowance is N175,461.96, and his recess allowance is N20,642.58. The above figures were consistent in the copies of the pay slips for the six months, as presented by Hassan.

The Kaduna State governor had earlier disclosed his pay cheque and challenged the NASS leadership to do the same. He said,
“The call to #OpenNASS is not a personal one. It is one, which the leadership of the National Assembly owes to all Nigerians. It is, therefore, disingenuous for the Speaker to use State Government budgets as the excuse for the opacity of the NASS budget.

“In 2016, the NASS budget for its 469 members was larger than the capital budget of Kaduna State, with close to 10 million inhabitants. It is also larger than the entire budget of several Nigerian States. Indeed, over the past ten years from 2008, the NASS, as an institution, has cost the country over a trillion naira without any detail on how this amount was allocated and spent.

“There is no state government in Nigeria with a budget nearly as opaque as that of NASS. In March 2016, this National Assembly, led by its Chairman, promised to provide a detailed breakdown of the National Assembly budget. Nigerians are waiting,” El-Rufai challenged through a statement issued by his Special Assistant (Media and Publicity), Samuel Aruwan.

In response, the House of Representatives, however, accused El-Rufai of cleverly publishing the ‘security budget of the Kaduna State Government’, which was different from the ‘security vote of the Governor’, being the issue in contention.

The Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Abdulrazak Namdas, again challenged El-Rufai to publish his security vote, not the funds budgeted for security projects by the state.

October 2016 pay slip