The Nigerian Senate has said that Senator Shehu Sani was in order when he revealed the N45m quarterly allowance that each Senator takes home.
And it quickly added that the information about the emoluments of senators was never a secret.
Senate Spokesman, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi, 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.
The confirmation from the Senate Spokesman is coming years after the Upper Chambers have on number of occasions refused to make public their allowances and emolument
According to him, Senator Shehu Sani did not disclose anything new.
Sani who represents Kaduna Central disclose 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.
Abdullahi dismissed any insinuations that Sani’s colleague 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 traveling , 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.
