The spokesman of the Senate Yemi Adaramodu has downplayed criticisms over wages earned by federal lawmakers, saying the National Assembly’s budget is just one per cent of the country’s budget.

Senator Adaramodu said contrary to widely-held belief, the lawmakers are not earning humongous sums as salaries.

“Like I said, in the 2023 budget, and our 2024 budget, the budget of the National Assembly is not up to 1% of the whole budget, it’s not up to,” Senator Adaramodu said on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.

“And National Assembly is an arm of government that is the legislative arm of government.”

The salaries and allowances of National Assembly members have been matters of intense debate and criticism by Nigerians.

Over the years, many have accused them of earning bogus wages and bonuses despite the country’s lean resources. The exact figures earned by the lawmakers have been shrouded in secrecy over the years.

The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives Benjamin Kalu had in February described it as a “far cry from what it is supposed to be”.

“Talking about the salaries of the National Assembly, it is a far cry from what it is supposed to be,” he said in the February 26 edition of Channels Television’s Politics Today.

“At the moment, talking about the salary of the National Assembly. I have said this over and again: it is not as much as people think. Salary is different from allowance, which is meant to do the jobs our constituents have sent us to do”.

Recently, a former speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara said his total allowance in office was N25 million, pegging his monthly salary at N400,000.

In 2018, a former lawmaker Senator Shehu Sani said he got N750,000 monthly as salary and N13.5 million monthly running costs, triggering an outcry among Nigerians.

But Senator Adaramodu insists that in comparison with the National budget, the lawmakers’ budget is not humongous though he failed to mention what they take home.

“And so within this budget, that is where the salaries of legislators are; that is where the salaries of all the auxiliary staff in the National Assembly are,” the Ekiti South lawmaker argued.

“That is where either the bureaucrats, the technocrats, or the support staff of the National Assembly [get paid].”