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Prof. Itse Sagay has told Senate President Ahmad Lawan to stop misleading Nigerians, adding that senators earned N15m monthly and not N750,000.
         Lawan had stated on Tuesday, June 25, that he earned N750,000 as salary, adding that there was nothing like “jumbo pay”. Sagay added that ordinary members of the National Assembly don’t earn as much as presiding officers. Sagay, however, said everyone knew that the bulk of the money earned by senators was embedded in their allowances, and that the Senate president was only speaking half-truth. He said: “I respect and like him (Lawan), but what he has done is to give half-truth. He is telling us the actual salary without mentioning anything about the allowances. “That is where the jumbo pay comes in, when you talk of building, furniture, domestic this or that, 15 items and those items alone bring everything up to N13.5m a month. So, simply mentioning the bare salary, which brings it to over N14m, is not sufficient. “So, technically, he is right. That is their salary. But what is his income, take-home pay, at the end of the month? It is about N15m and we are not including many other things we need talk about now. Sagay added that ordinary members of the National Assembly don’t earn as much as presiding officers. He said he was still trying to ascertain the allowances of principal officers. He said: “What I have not been able to do is give details of what the leadership earns. There is the leadership aspect that I hadn’t revealed, the excess that the Senate president and deputy Senate president, leader of the house, the same thing applying to the House (of Representatives).  What they get, the current ones that I have not been able to release. I had the details of the previous House. They were mindboggling, we are talking of one person getting up to N280m a year in allowances for his position. But I don’t know what they had during the Saraki era or what the present group is going to do.