Deputy Chief Whip of the Senate, Senator Francis Alimikhena says members of the Senate are in actual sense not being paid jumbo salaries as widely reported by the media. According to him, wardrobe allowance for senators is just N42,000 and monthly salary, N900,000.
“Like all these talk about jumbo pay and the rest, I have not seen the jumbo pay. For instance they were talking about wardrobe allowance of about N6 million or thereabout. But we were told the wardrobe allowance is N42,000 and N42,000 cannot be a jumbo pay,” he told Vanguard in an interview.
“I have not seen the jumbo pay. Whether the jumbo pay will come tomorrow, it is only when I see it that I can comment on it.
“Meanwhile what they read on the floor of the Senate to us is what I have just told you now. They said wardrobe allowance which the papers published as N6 million for every Senator is N42,000 and I don’t think that N42,000 is a thing that somebody should make noise about.
“And if you calculate all these as you were told, the take home pay of a Senator is about N900,000 a month, so I don’t see the jumbo pay there. Maybe probably they calculated what you take in a year or added the furniture allowance which you receive once in four years.
“And the N42,000 wardrobe allowance that they are talking about is paid once in a year. So I have not seen any jumbo pay, maybe the jumbo pay will come, I don’t know.
Alimikhena noted that it was based on issues of alleged financial recklessness that the Senate President Bukola Saraki set up a committee on finance to look at all the loopholes.
“This Senate is not going to be an extravagant Senate and you should also bear in mind that this is change. The slogan of APC is change, change for the good and not change for the bad. The change from the wrong way of doing things to change to good things so that Nigerians will benefit. I don’t think the 8th Senate is insensitive to the yearnings of Nigerians,” the Senator said.
