Nigerian Lawmakers query 250k per sitting allowance of Sovereign Wealth Authority board members

It has been revealed that board members of Nigeria's Sovereign Wealth Authority (SWA) are paid N250,000 per sitting. More interestingly, the board members sit four times in some days, totaling N1m sitting allowance per member. The multiple entries of four sittings in just one day were discovered during an investigative hearing by the lawmakers, while vetting the accounts of the authority.

According to Vanguard, responding to the query, the Managing Director of SWA, Mr Uche Ubosi, said:

“It is the standard practice of sovereign wealth authorities world wide to pay sitting allowances to board members.’’ This however angered the lawmakers who declared that he should produce evidence of such payments where board members were paid as much as N1 million per day. They also queried the reason all the payment schedules were computer print outs and demanded for signed receipts and signed documents authorizing such payments.

Chairman of PAC, Kingsley Chinda, in his ruling ordered that all relevant concrete documents, not photocopies, concerning the payments should be submitted to this committee within the next eight days.