Pastor in the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Bowo Olateru-Olagbegi, has criticised the Federal Government for its 25-per-cent budgetary allocation to the National Assembly.

Speaking at a summit organised by The Lamb Christian Centre in Lagos, titled ‘Leadership, entrepreneurship and mentorship,’ on Saturday, he said he would organise a petition to force the lawmakers to reduce their emoluments.

He said, “Part of the problem we have in this country is the way we spend money. The National Assembly, for instance, gets 25 per cent of the entire budget of the nation and there are only 409 of them. We need to do something about it.

“One of the things we are planning to do is to take the signatures of people via an online platform to petition the government to cut the emoluments of these lawmakers. We want to get up to 100,000 signatures.

“We will work with the Nigeria Labour Congress to force them (the lawmakers), because the only way we can achieve it is through strikes. We intend to work with the trade unions; we will tell them, ‘Unless you reduce your emoluments, we will not come to work.’ That is the first step.”

According to Olateru-Olagbegi, the challenges in the country boil down to leadership. He described as baffling the fuel scarcity in the nation, despite the nation’s high oil production rate.

“It is like saying someone produces water and he doesn’t have water to drink in his house. It doesn’t make sense. We produce petroleum and yet we have petrol scarcity. That is the tragedy we are experiencing as a country,” he said.

He noted that Nigeria ranks among the lower fifth of countries in poverty, adding that global financial assessments show that $300bn of the nation’s revenue has been lost to illicit financial transactions in recent decades.

Olateru-Olagbegi questioned the Federal Government’s claims that Nigeria’s economy is the largest in Africa. According to him, Nigeria, a country of about 180 million people, produces a fraction of the electricity generated in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which he said has a population of about three million.