Confab: Group Berates Delegates For Demanding Pay For Aides

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines Thursday, March 20th, 2014

By Kayode Adelowokan, Lagos

The Coalition Against Corruption Leaders (CACOL) has scolded some of the delegates at the ongoing national conference that requested that their personal aides be paid by the government.

Chairman of the National Conference Justice Kutigi speaking during one of the Confab meetings

Each of the delegates is to receive N12m for the three months exercise. The allowance includes money for accommodation, transportation, part of feeding (the delegates are to have free lunch at the venue of the conference.

The delegates are expected to have aides such as drivers and personal assistants in order to ease their works and movements; however some of them requested that the Federal Government should take over the allowances of their aides.

Reacting to the situation, the Executive Chairman of the Coalition, Comrade Debo Adeniran, rued the insensitivity and selfishness of those delegates, urged them to learn from their contemporaries that rejected the pay.

Adeniran said, “It is so unfortunate that some of the people representing the generality of the Nigerian people could coordinate themselves in such untoward manner. What moral authority do they have to criticize the National Assembly for their jumbo pay? How many of them could earn a million naira in three months, not to talk of twelve and they want to keep it all to themselves?

“Ordinarily, they are supposed to have been sponsored by the groups or the sections of the society they are representing. They should have given up the money like Tunde Bakare and Olisa Agbakoba with a view to setting a good example of how people should engage in selfless service to the nation.

“We are not unaware of those who may not have the capacity to fund themselves but they don’t need more than what they require to stay in Abuja for three months. That they would have accurately calculated, and return whatever is remaining of the jumbo pay. For the students, the jobless and the indigent delegates who came from communities that couldn’t have been able to put enough resources together to finance them, that is understandable.

“But all the delegates representing the professional groups, ethnics, political parties, religious groups and the rest of them need not be given such allowances. It is only those that are primarily dependent on charity that could have moral authority to collect such money and they ought not to be given more than they need to finance their three-month.

“What exactly are they spending the money on? This is not supposed to be a money-making venture to the extent that bribery and corruption would now pervade the atmosphere.”