All the 492 members of the National constitutional conference currently sitting in Abuja have received bank notifications of a part payment of their allowances for the month of March.

Giving this indication in Abuja yesterday, a delegate to the conference, Mike Ozekhome, confirmed that he has received a bank alert notifying him of the payment of N1,460,000 into his account. This amount, according to him, represents the two weeks allowance for each member.

Ozekhome, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) also denied reports that each of the delegates will get N12 million each at the end of the three-month duration for the conference.

He explained that the actual monthly take home pay for each delegate is about N3.3 million.

In his explanation, Ozekhome said: “From the alert from my bank, the sum of N1,460,000 was paid in, representing two weeks allowance. Calculated pro-rata, this amounts to N2,920,000 per month.

“If we take this as net and assume that 10 percent was deducted for VAT and tax, this will still bring the gross monthly take home pay to be N3, 212,000.

“If the deductions for tax and VAT constitute 10 percent of the gross, then the monthly net take home pay is N3,066,000. Either way, the take home pay per delegate is more like N3m and not the exaggerated N4 million,” he stated.

Though the human rights activist and lawyer commended the decision of Pastor Tunde Bakare and Olisa Agbakoba to reject their allowances as sacrifice for the nation, he said he would collect his and donate it to charitable causes.

“I will not agree to further enrich the Federal Government of Nigeria by returning my conference allowance. For one thing, the money has already been appropriated and released from government coffers.

“The skewed Nigerian system where corruption is very rife suggests that the money can develop wings and fall into wrong hands within government bureaucracy by simply flying away.

“I will not have the means of knowing if it got into the federation account,” he stated.