Nigeria’s president, president Muhammadu Buhari, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, state governors, and their deputies may have enjoyed about N651.2m in hardship allowance in the last eight years according to findings.
The allowance, 50 per cent of the annual basic salary, is also enjoyed by judges in the country.
According to a document obtained from the website of the Revenue Mobilization and Fiscal Allocation Commission, the president is entitled to N1.76m annually as a hardship allowance. This means that within a period of eight years, Buhari would have earned N14.08m as hardship allowance.
The Vice President is entitled to N1.52m annually, which means that in eight years, Osinbajo would have earned N12.16m as hardship allowance.
While a state governor is entitled to N1.11m annually, a deputy state governor is entitled to N1.06m.
In eight years, the hardship allowance of the 36 state governors would have gulped N319.68m while that of their deputies would have gulped N305.28m.
All this, while Nigeria’s debt profile steadily nears N77 trillion and the government shows no signs of slowing down
As Buhari spends his last days in office, labour unions recently scored the regime and state governor low, saying they pauperized workers and inflicted hardship on Nigerians.
They lamented the galloping inflation in the country, which they said had eroded the 40 per cent pay rise recently approved by the Federal Government with effect from January.
The National Treasurer of the Nigeria Labor Congress, Hakeem Ambali, submitted that the outgoing regime had inflicted heavy hardship and suffering on the Nigerian workers.
According to him, the workers have suffered job losses, insecurity, economic hardship and other calamities under Buhari.
A report by the National Bureau of Statistics claims that about 133 million Nigerians live in poverty, a recipe for a new dimension of poverty-related crises in Nigeria.
Read Also :Surging inflation pushes 7m Nigerians into poverty
Recently, the Minister of Labor and Employment, Chris Ngige, said Nigerians will not die but will adjust to the economic hardships in the country.
In a statement, the minister noted that economic hardships were not peculiar to Nigeria alone but to the world at large also noted that the agitation by workers for more wages was not peculiar to Nigeria.
Meanwhile, less than a couple of days to the inauguration of a new regime, the current administration continues to sign off on contracts for projects worth billions of naira.
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