The delay by President Muhammadu Buhari in appointing cabinet ministers may have unconsciously saved the nation about N54. 3 million, New Telegraph has learnt. Buhari was sworn in on May 29 and his administration would have spent two months in office by the end of July without cabinet ministers.
His handlers and kitchen cabinet insist that President Buhari wants to jettison past conventional methods of selecting ministers by pruning down the usually large size of both cabinet ministers and ministries to a manageable number.
This development has attracted criticisms to the administration. Going by the antecedents of previous administrations, there are usually about 42 cabinet ministers, 36 of whom are selected based on states’ slot while additional six are chosen based on the six geo-political zones of the country. There is a slight variation in allowances and salary of ministers of state and a senior ministers.
According to salary and allowances schedule for political office holders obtained from the Revenue Allocation and Fiscal Commission, government’s statutory agency empowered to provide emolument package for different category of political office holders, the annual basic salary for a minister is N2,026,400:00.
This translates to a monthly salary of N168,866:66, while other allowances comprising of motor vehicle fueling is N126,650; personal assistant – N42,216, domestic staff – N126,650, entertainment -N75,990, utilities – N50,660, monitoring – N33,773 and newspapers/periodicals N25,330 (all per month).
All these would have cost government N46.8 million in the last two months.
