Lifetime pension for Lawmakers: Special scheme for special people?

It's May Day! And we celebrate and tip our hats to the hardworking Nigerian workers. For years, they have worked tirelessly to keep the Nigerian state up and running. The government on the other hand has also been hard at work making sure that they are not well compensated. State governors find it more profitable building mosques and town hall centres than paying the salary arrears of their workers. The miserly $50 minimum wage has recently been increased (on paper) to chicken change $83 and of course, the governors are far from happy. They claim to lack the capacity to afford such a meager compensation for the men and women who drive Africa's biggest economy. But I digress. My original area of focus is pensions.

 

 

What we currently operate is the contributory pension scheme where money is taken out of your salary every month and stashed away to be made available after you retire or carted away by some official that will never be punished. People who have worked hard for decades, giving their all to the progress of the state, end up with a meager pension of $83 or perhaps $55. But a young man who was smart enough to join politics through the back door, ends up in the legislature and serves (or rather, disserves) for a few years, will stand a chance to earn a lifetime pension which is equivalent to his working salary and several other undeserved privileges and outrageous allowances which he also enjoyed while he was still in office. So the question is, what makes the members of a non-functioning legislature more special than the hardworking drivers of our economy?