Senate discredits Senator Shehu Sani’s allowance secrecy claims
The Senate has discredited Senator Shehu Sani’s widely reported claim that the monthly allowance of lawmakers in the upper chambers was a closely-guarded secret.
Senate’s spokesman Senator Aliyu Sabiu stressed that the information about the emoluments of senators was never a secret.
Contrary to the Senator’s claims, the Senate Spokesman said the figure Sani gave out about running cost of the offices of Senators were contained in various line items and expenditure heads of the budget of the National Assembly which has been made public.
According to him, Senator Shehu Sani did not disclose anything new, even as some media reports were celebrating the lawmaker as the new “whistleblower” of the Senate.
Sani, who represents Kaduna Central made the claims about the figure and the N700,000 salary of senators in an interview with The News magazine. The interview was published last week, triggering social commentaries about the “Senators’ well kept secret” and creating the impression that Senator Shehu Sani was a hero.
Abdullahi also dismissed media reports insinuating that Sani’s colleagues were unhappy with him and said if people had looked critically at the budget of the National Assembly which has since been made public, they would have seen that various line items like travelling , medicals, consultancy and the rest were captured in the budget and they were the funds divided for each Senator’s use.
“Almost all holders of elective and appointive offices have running costs allocated to their offices and that cannot be said to be part of their salaries”, Abdullahi stated.