Federal Ministers under President Muhammadu Buhari, take home a monthly wage of N942,000 after tax, says Minister of Labour and Employment Chris Ngige.
Ngige made the disclosure on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
Ngige also disclosed that ministers do not receive allowances, except when they have to embark on trips.
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“My salary is N942,000 a month. My salary with my PA — gross total after tax — my feeding, my transport, the transport of one PA, the salary of my gardener, my cook, they are all consolidated. After heavy taxation, they pay me N942,000.
“Every minister you see, that is what it is; special advisers earn around that amount too. The allowances are not anything, we don’t have any allowances except if you travel. You can get duty tour allowance like every other public officer,” Ngige said.
He also said the travel allowance the ministers receive was recently reviewed alongside that of permanent secretaries, among others.
“It was reviewed to N100,000 for a minister, and I think ministers of states, N75,000; permanent secretaries, N70,000, and down the line. Level one, everybody else’s own was reviewed, not only our own,” he said.
Asked why the government has not been able to bring down the unemployment rate in the country, which rose to 33.3 percent in 2021, Ngige argued that job creation is a responsibility of the private sector, not just the public sector.
“The point there is that job creation is a cross-cutting thing; it is not only for the public sector to do,” Ngige said.
“Everybody has it in mind that it is the government that creates jobs: ‘If we don’t work in federal ministry or government agency, we have not got a job.’ No, the private sector is there.
“It is not something for government alone. And I am telling you now, if the economy is not good, you will not have enough money in the system to ginger the system in such a way that jobs are created. That is the problem; foreign direct investment has gone down,” he added.