“Paragraph 2 (a) of the Code of Conduct for Public Officers in the Fifth Schedule of the 1999 Constitution is very clear, it forbids any public officers, and all these officers are public officers including the President, from earning salaries and emoluments from two public offices at the same time.”
This is the basis of the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) suit filed against the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, and former governors in the 10th Senate over their alleged collection of both salaries and pensions.
Deputy Director of SERAP, Kolawole Oluwadare, explained on Nigeria Info’s Hard Facts, that the suit has two courses of action. The first, which is based on the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, is a request for information, seeking to know if indeed the Senators in the 10th Assembly who are former governors have been receiving pensions as former governors and how much money they have received so far.
If the Senators have received such pensions, Oluwadare said it is unlawful as it amounts to a "double emolument", flouting constitutional provisions.
"We're not talking of morality; it is a matter of legality," he said.
The second course of action is a request for the senators in question to refund the pensions they have collected since they became senators.
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