APC blames PDP for National Assembly workers' strike saying its leaders only paid themselves

NIGERIA'S ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has blamed the main opposition the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the ongoing industrial action by National Assembly staff saying they constitute the leadership of both houses of parliament.

Yesterday, the Parliamentary Staff Association of Nigeria (Pasan) announced a four-day strike to protest the non-payment of salaries and arrears to its members working in the National Assembly. Nigerian legislators are among the highest paid in the world, with senators entitled to monthly expenses of N13.5m ($37,500) in addition to their monthly salaries of more than $2,000.

Annually, senators take home about $55,000 a year, while members of the House of Representatives earn about $42,000. Despite this, National Assembly staff remain unpaid and the APC has attributed this to the PDP leaders who head both the senate and the House of Representatives, who they claim paid themselves all their due allowances but showed little care for the staff members.

Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, the APC's national publicity secretary, said the development is a sad reminder of what Nigerians witnessed under the PDP administration. He added that the PDP’s 16-year rule was characterised by such incidences of unpaid salaries, ghost workers and a shocking disdain for workers’ welfare.

“While the minority PDP usurpers who parade themselves as the National Assembly leadership have promptly paid themselves their allowances, National Assembly workers under the umbrella of Parliamentary Staff Association of Nigeria are owed their duly earned 28% increase in their salaries since 2010.

“Perhaps, if the National Assembly leaders have focused on their core legislative business and operations rather than resort to subterfuge with the sole intent of undermining the APC government, the welfare of parliamentary workers would not have been taken for granted. Nigerians will recall that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration in one of its first actions as a government approved federal government bailouts to states to settle salaries owed workers and that is the stuff of people-centred governance which the APC represents as a worker deserves his wages," Mallam Issa-Onilu added.

Both the senate president Senator Bukola Saraki and the speaker of the House of Representatives Hon Yakubu Dogara are members of the PDP. Today, parliamentary business was severely disrupted as security men locked the workers out of the National assembly complex on account of the strike.

Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu added: “We have now learnt that the parliamentary workers have blocked all entrances into the National Assembly complex and cut off essential services like power and water supply effectively crippling any form of activity within the premises. The APC calls on the senate president, Senator Bukola Saraki and the speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara to do the needful by attending to the demands of the parliamentary workers.

“The welfare of workers is a cardinal policy of the APC administration. We, therefore call on the PDP-led National Assembly to save the country this national embarrassment.”