Senate bars Gowon, Buhari, IBB, Shonekan from benefits

Another laudable bills from the Senate.

After months of delay, Senate yesterday finally passed a bill excluding former military Heads of States, and the Head of the Interim National Government (ING) from benefiting from a new remuneration package for former leaders.
The bill excluded Generals Yakubu Gowon, Ibrahim Babangida, Muhammadu Buhari, Abdulsalami Abubakar, late Sani Abacha and Chief Ernest Shonekan from enjoying the new pension package for past leaders.
Senate President, David Mark, a former military officer in a remark that stunned his colleagues, said the exclusion of former military heads of state “was to discourage other ways of getting into power through unconstitutional means.
He said: “The only way recognised by the constitution is through the ballot box and not through the barrel of the gun.”
The Senate ruled that only former elected president and heads of legislature would benefit from the new remuneration.
Passage of the bill which had dragged for so long in the senate followed the final adoption of the report of the senate committee on National Planning.
Contributing, Senator Zaynab Kure, a strong political associate of IBB, said: “The thrust of the bill is essentially to amend Decree 32 of 1999 and ensure that only democratically elected former Presidents are entitled in the schedule to the bill.”
The bill provides for remuneration to former Presidents, Vice Presidents, Senate Presidents, Deputy Senate Presidents, Speakers and Deputy Speakers of the House of Representatives and Chief Justices of the Federation.
“The members of families or deceased former Presidents and Vice Presidents shall be entitled to annual payments as shall be recommended by the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) and approved by the National Assembly,” the bill says.
The remuneration is also to cover up-keep of spouse and children of deceased former Presidents and deceased former Vice Presidents “and the education of the children up to the university graduate level or its equivalent.”
Senators at the session yesterday argued that former military heads of state cannot be part of the remuneration package because they came to power through means that breached section 1(1) of the 1999 Constitution.
Senator Olorunimbe Mamora (AC, Lagos East) said including ex-military rulers in the package would amount to encouraging truncation of democracy. He said: “We should not be seen to be encouraging anything that will undermine democracy, we should add elected in the clause.

They should have taken them out of the National Council of States too.

Kk take it easy,before you said they should be banished from the country

Truth to tell they do not serve any useful purpose on the Council. You know it. They will agree with the Presido on any decision, even if he decides that the sun rose from the west.
Again. they will make 4 times what they miss from pensions.

The National Assembly has approved a better pension package for past military rulers and others who illegally took over government in Nigeria.

Military heads of government were initially excluded by the Senate from an enhanced pension scheme that was meant to honour past democratic leaders, however, a harmonized report, approved by the Senate that will soon be forwarded to the President for signing into law indicates that the past leaders

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