Senator Rochas Okorocha has said if Nigeria and Nigerians are not ready to pay senators reasonable wages, the upper chamber should either be scrapped or made part-time.
Okorocha (Imo West, APC) said even though he had never drawn salary since he became senator, the monthly salary of his colleagues was not more than N2m.
He noted that even the allowances which people complain about, comprising rent amongst others, wasn’t up to N5 million and not enough to pay their rent alone in the kind of places they deserve to live because of their status.
Okorocha added that Nigerians should not expect a senator to go and live in a place like Mararaba (a suburb of the FCT in Nasarawa State) just because he wants to be senator and that as long as Nigeria continues to keep the Senate as presently constituted, the country must pay.
He stated this in Abuja, on Monday, at a media event tagged “Conversation with Owelle @ 59” organised by the Abuja Council of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), as part of activities to commemorate the senator’s 59th birthday.
On the issue of insecurity ravaging the country, he said the problem can only be resolved by having the right leaders, noting that the country’s democracy is structured to give faulty leaders with no ideology.
Okorocha regretted that the government, by taking the wrong decisions, had succeeded in giving leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, a larger than life image but the time had come for the federal government and south east leaders to come together and find a solution, especially against the backdrop of complaints that whereas Boko Haram members were getting amnesty, the government had arrested and locked up Kanu.
The three-time presidential aspirant, while speaking on whether he will run in the 2023 presidential election pointed out that unlike others who have the ambition to be president, he is driven by a vision for a united Nigeria.
Earlier, Chairman of NUJ Abuja, Comrade Emmanuel Ogbeche, said the programme was organised in recognition of Okorocha’s service to humanity, particularly in the area of education, without which a lot more young people may have been on the streets, compounding the already fragile security of the country.
