(L-R) Laoye Jayeola, president, CIBN, presenting Nigerian and CIBN flags to Mr. Pa Macoumba Njie, chairman, Gambia Bankers Association and CEO Trust Bank Ltd. Gambia during the signing of MoU between CIBN and Gambia Bankers Association on establishment of Exams Centre in Banjul, Gambia.

MEMBERS of the National Assembly are ripping off Nigerians through varied means. Investigations have revealed that members of the Senate and the House of Representatives whose emoluments are paid en-block may be earning far more than the 25 per cent of the total overhead budget of the federal government when all their entitlements from their offices, committees and other oversight activities are considered. Observers of the activities of the members are miffed that there are virtually no receipts and documentation for most of the transactions which are presented to the resident federal auditors. This has made it possible for the real cost of the National Assembly to the country not to be known.
Members of the National Assembly are believed to have adopted fraudulent practices such as making spurious claims like employing certain number of people of certain ranks in their constituency and committee offices, whereas in the actual sense they do not have as many employees and neither do they pay as much as they claim. They have also made some parastatals under their committees to be directly responsible for some of their needs both at home and office.
They also make claim of several over-sight functions that cannot be verified. National Assembly members have also made travelling out of the country especially to places like Dubai and South Africa a past time and at the expense of Nigerians. They have also allocated themselves slots for new jobs from the ministries and parastatals under the committees that have been allocated to them. This is why the members always fight for inclusion in some of the juicy committees.
To make matter worse, some of the members are not known by members of their constituencies as they do not visit them unless it is time for re-election when they go to share rice to some people and claim that they have given back something to their people. Most disappointingly, some of the members have never raised their hands to move a motion all through their time.
Taking a cue from what happens across the world, Nigerians believe that the existence of the kind of legislators we now have at the National Assembly is enough to force Nigerians to react in a way that the problem with democracy in the country would be finally addressed. There are strong indications, therefore, that the National Assembly may be standing on the precipice as Nigerian electorate who are going through difficulties to register for the 2011 general elections have noted that they will not go through this process only to elect Nigerians that will only earn huge allowances  to further impoverish them.