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The Labour Party at a press briefing in what appears to serve as the sternest upbraiding of the chairman of the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), Mr. Mohammed Shehu, warns against salary increase for political office holders while listing a litany of various areas of the party’s discontent with how the country is currently being administered by President Ahmed Bola Tinubu
At a press briefing addressed by Prince Tony Akeni, the interim
National Publicity Secretary of the Labour Party, it alleged that every Tinubu minister and head of agency wants to leave government in 2027 richer than Dangote, but not necessarily through hard work and industry. The chairman of the Nigeria Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), Mr. Mohammed Shehu, for his personal benefits, appears to have joined the list as the latest addition to Nigeria’s unfortunate story of the insensitivity of government and its agencies to the hydra-headed plights of Nigeria’s citizens.
He said that on Monday August 18 2025, Mohammed Shehu woke up on the wrong side of his bed and decided to take his own pound of flesh from the long-suffering but pliant Nigerian people by adding his own dimension of nightmares to the treasury bunkering of the ruling APC government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
You will recall that in a press conference he held in Abuja on the aforementioned date, the fiscal allocation commission’s chairman served Nigerians a menu of fallacies to insult the intelligence of Nigerians by claiming that all Mr. President receives for his office in an entire year is a paltry #18million at a salary of #1.5million per month, while his ministers receive #1million per month or #12million per annum. He further said that this mischievous and obnoxious lie of figure juggling was corroborated by the CBN Governor, Mr. Olayemi Michael Cardoso, who, according to unrefuted information in the public domain, enjoys unheard-of Eldorado luxury living which, beside his monumental monthly salary, includes a #1b (one billion naira) annual housing allowance and $15million or #24billion global flight tickets and single-handedly appointed a bevy of lady consultants who receive #35million and #50million per month, (not per year). Akehi said “For avoidance of doubt two of the officials who receive these Olympian and outrageous salaries in the office of the Nigerian CBN Governor, according to unchallenged reports, are Ms. Daphne Dafinone and Ms. Nkiru Balonwu who are currently facing EFCC investigations for alleged egregious financial conduct.”
The party further alleged that “the above infantile Disneyland story of the RMAFC’s chairman, Mr. Shehu Mohammed, is further starkly contradicted by the fact that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s wife has suddenly, after 2023 swearing-in of Tinubu, found fortune which enables her to donate to events as much as #1billion in a single occasion when her husband receives a miserable paltry sum of #18million per annum as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
“When we say every actor of fortune under the Tinubu-APC maladministration is out to out-Dangote by the time the Labour Party and the good people of Nigeria boot them out of office in 2027, it is both a moral and institutional duty that we supply background to prove our assertion.” “I urge all Nigerians to join our party follow the trail of this locust swarm called APC by reading this to the end and rising to act.” He further urged.
The Interim publicity Secretary said “we shall forerun our engagement of the chairman of the revenue allocation commission and his campaign for salary increase for politicians with the facts and figures of epic public finance abuses we present below to help Nigerians reflect, evaluate afresh and to stand up against the dangers posed to their lives by the current APC administration.” He listed what he term “the chronicle of government promoted corruption among heads of agencies which the Labour Party delivers below are for just 2025, and the year is still running.
1. In the 2025 Federal Government budget figure of #54.99trillion signed into law on February 8, 2025, the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Sen. Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, needed to buy a nuclear station that produces electricity for the common good of Nigerians. So, he inserted an amount that will cost Nigerians #266million per street light; an unseen type of streetlight that would probably come with a Maikano power plant and a piece of the sun each. The APC rubber-stamp Senate of Mr. Godswill Akpabio approved it. When yam falls into a palm oil bowl, what do you expect? The above budget for mere streetlights was in addition to Minister Bagudu tucking into the 2025 budget what BudgIT, the public finance tracking agency, called “ghost projects” amounting to #6.93 trillion.
2. On June 10, 2025, the APC’s FCT sheriff, Minister Nyesom Wike re-commissioned the now re-named Abuja International Conference Centre after a solo renovation cost submission of #39billion. The renovation went through contract award without competitive biddings required by Nigeria’s Due Process laws. This is an amount of money that would have built for Nigerians a minimum of nine modern equiped health centres in each state of the federation or approximately three health centres in every senatorial district of Nigeria, including Abuja FCT. To comfort Nigerians for their pains and complaints, Nyesom Wike has been singing the lullaby to the public against critics’ umbrage that the conference centre, which is actually a ghosts’ haven 90% of the year, is now churning mountainous revenues into the coffers of the government after its renovation, and that it is fully booked up to 2027. Of course, it is fully booked by ghosts for ghost activities.
Meanwhile, in contrast to Minister Wike’s #39billion windfall for a conference hall renovation, only #10billion was budgeted for Nigeria’s entire land border security covering 4,047 kilometers, a whopping #150billion was set on fire to purchase a used presidential jet for President Tinubu and another #5billion for an idle presidential yacht.
3. On June 11, 2025, the Minister of Agriculture, Sen. Abubakar Kyari, approved a portion of the ministry’s 2025 budget of #636billion for a fasting and prayer programme for all its staff to boost agriculture and vanquish hunger in Nigeria. The circular to all staff on this epic event summoned staff to come to work fasting for “a solemn session for God’s guidance and success in supporting the (Tinubu) government’s efforts to achieve food security.” Nigerians, where on earth except APC’s Nigeria is modern mechanized farming and food security attained through budget financed prayers and fasting? Is this also the model for governance of nations which China, Japan, Singapore, The Netherlands, Israel, even war-torn Ukraine and other successful Agric pillared economies used to achieve food security?
4. On August 5, 2025, the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Mr. Festus Keyamo, dutifully molested Nigerians’ ear drums with the news of renovating Lagos Airport at a cost of #712billion or $447million. Again, this airport could be renovated fit and proper to world standard with a much smaller fraction of that cost with ample room to build a maternity annex in the peri-urban communities of every of Nigeria’s 774 local government council areas.
5. On August 14, 2025, the APC Works Minister, Engr. David Umahi, ruthlessly shocked Nigerians by announcing that his ministry needed #3.6trillion to demolish and build, brand new from scratch, the 3rd Mainland Bridge in Lagos or, ironically, a higher amount of #3.8trillion to repair the existing one. What Minister David Umahi is audaciously asking to renovate the Lagos 3rd Mainland Bridge is 1.97% or nearly 2% of Nigeria’s entire 2025 federal government budget. Let us take stock.
i. The Lagos 3rd Mainland Bridge is 11.8km long, and has insignificant physical obstacles by marine engineering standards, which involve mere water depths ranging from two to ten meters, the deepest point, it is said, being at the entrance of the Commodore Channel.
ii. The longest bridge in the world, the Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge (DKG Bridge) is 168.8km. Considerable engineering obstacles to its construction involved about 150 river channels. Additionally, it had to be designed with ferro-concrete bastions to support the famous Beijing-Shanghai high speed railway which intercepts it.
iii. The cost of constructing the DKG Bridge of 168.8km was $8.5b or #13trillion. This brought the average cost of one kilometer to #79billion. Nigeria’s Minister David Umahi’s cost of $2.35b for mere 11.8km brings the average cost of one kilometer of his 3rd Mainland Bridge to $198.8m or #305b. This is 3.8 times or nearly 400% higher than China’s DKG Bridge. It is ok to aspire to be as rich or to out-rich Dangote, but Labour Party insists that it should not be at the death of Nigerians through phantom budgets and corruption facilitated mass burials.
6. Before the above, Nigeria’s PDP and APC governments from 1999 to 2023 had burnt $18b in refurbishing and rehabilitation claims of the country’s three refineries in Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna. In less than 15 months of being sworn into office, Tinubu and his APC cabinet set another $2.8 on fire on a failed wild goose rehabilitation scheme which was sold to the Nigerian public in barefaced deceit and ended in a catastrophic flop. Shockingly, without formal admission of failure and expenditure audit, the Tinubu Administration is quietly out to put the decorated skeletons of the refineries for sale to cronies. In a recent fatalistic undertaker’s verdict by Alhaji Aliko Dangote, the private owner of Nigeria’s only working and largest refinery in Africa, the Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna refinery ghosts of Nigeria can never work again.
7. Also before now, rewind to May 26, 2023, three days to late President Muhammadu Buhari’s hand-over of power to the Tinubu Administration. Nigerians will recall that Buhari and his then Aviation Minister, Mr. Hadi Sirika, chartered an Ethiopian Boeing 737 commercial jet in Addis Ababa, painted it into a sham Nigeria Air courier colours and logo and flew it into Nigeria. On the said May 26, 2025, the static plane was decorated in ribbons at the Nnamdi Azikiwe airport in Abuja and displayed to the press as a ceremony commissioning the new Nigeria Air courier, with other jets to follow soon after. After the unveiling it was flown back to Ethiopia, the Nigerian colours and logo washed away and its Ethiopian colours restored. It immediately resumed operations with the Ethiopian fleet after its one-day scam ceremony by the APC government in Nigeria. In Buhari’s eight years of annual budgets for the aviation sector and the phantom “Nigeria Air” swindle, his APC administration swindled from the Nigeria treasury #85.42billion. No trial to conviction has been recorded till date on this massive, flagrant, in-your-face public fraud.
8. In the light of the above, the Labour Party hereby emphatically declares that the unsolicited, self appointed campaign by the chairman of the Nigeria Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), Mr. Mohammed Shehu, for salary increase for politicians, who are already clearly over-indulged in the eyes of civilize democracies of the world, is suspect. We are compelled to agree with millions of Nigerians that Mr. Mohammed Shehu has hidden unpatriotic motives in flying this audacious, unconscionable and insensitive scheme, especially at this time when countless Nigerians are passing through untold economic hardship and its accompanying privations, vagaries and indignities.
9. Our party’s advice to the chairman of the RMAFC and his unseen collaborators, in and outside the commission, who are behind this misadventure is that they should immediately retrace their steps in their best interest. This is so that the commission will not confirm the suspicion and incur the wrath of outraged Nigerians across the country and beyond who believe that given the unscrupulous, unprosecuted and regime pampered corruption of APC administrations in general, officials of the are aiming their hands for the jar of the Tinubu Administration’s unchecked APC corruption orgy at the expense of suffering Nigerians, expected to come through picking kudos commission from thousands of grateful Nigeria politicians nationwide who he may be in conspiracy with them to pay commission’s chairman and his team financial homage for a job well-done, as well as other goodwill exchange within the corridors of power.
Furthermore, it will be callous remiss for the revenue allocation commission not to realize that rewarding politicians with more public funds from Nigeria’s public treasury, which is already bleeding profusely from corruption, will keep Tinubu in his present mode of marathon borrowings and future short-changing foreign debts.
If anything, the campaign RMAFC should consider urgent, pressing and patriotic to join is to increase Nigeria’s workers minimum wage from its present miserable paltry sum of #70,000 per month. In case the RMAFC’s chairman is not aware, the United States of America just empathically issued a statement from across the Atlantic to appraise and advocate for improvement of Nigeria’s pathetic miniuwage. If a foreign nation could should demonstrate such empathy towards our suffering citizens, the RMAFC’s chairman and his administrative directors have no valid excuse not to do more.
Given the above corrosive corruption, grinding penury and retarded development potentials of Nigeria, it is painfully curious, an excruciating irony, that in her recent visit to Nigeria and the Presidency, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Nweala, the Nigerian born Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), should compliment the non-accounting administration of Bola Tinubu as doing well. Labour Party joins Nigeria in asking: will the WTO Director-General find the same benchmarks of corruption, pandemic official fraud, non-compliance with due process laws, flagrant inflation of infrastructure funds and sweeping insecurity plaguing Nigeria under the APC administration of Tinubu in any European, American, Asian countries or other regions of the world and honestly acclaim that they were doing well? Certainly not.
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Fellow Nigerians, those who burn down a country and those who watch them do so in silence, complacency from privileged insulation and inaction are equal culprits.
The fight to dismantle the structure, superstructure and architecture of corruption is not Peter Obi’s fight alone. It is not Labour Party’s fight alone. It is the fight of all of us 200million Nigerians. It is a fight for our children, their own children and generations unborn.
APC is burning down our country with never before seen monstrosity of corruption in virtually every sector of our economy, national life and the daily petrifying insecurity of lives and properties that now hold our country’s citizens hostage, wether in the cities or rural countrysides and farms where majority of our food and sustenance come from.
It takes a village to tie down a mad relative to give him medicine or put him in stocks for the safety of others. In 2027, let us rise together in communal unison as one people, irrespective of tribe, religion and region to see out of our land the wolf packs ravaging our flock, values and destiny as a great country.
