Lawyers Take Senators to Court Over Alleged Non-Performance and Salary Refund

Under the aegis of the Association of Legislative Drafting and Advocacy Practitioners (ALDRAP), legislative lawyers have taken steps to oblige senators from Nigeria to pay back a portion of their wages and benefits that they have been receiving since 2023 because of their said poor performance.
It is also being demanded that 40 senators refund all of the compensation and benefits they got while serving concurrently in the Nigerian Senate and the ECOWAS and Pan-African parliaments, which is against Nigerian law.
In a pre-action notice addressed to Senate President Godswill Akpabio, the legislative attorneys who have petitioned the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Tribunal as consumers unhappy with the senators’ services have sent a message to the Senate.

The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection panel’s rules provide that the respondent in a lawsuit is first served with a pre-action notice before being called to appear before the panel.

The letter containing the pre-action notice was delivered on May 26, 2025, and was signed by Amuga Jesse Williams, Administrative Secretary for ALDRAP.

The letter is titled “Pre-action Notice: Demand made pursuant to the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission Act, 2018 for the reimbursement of 78% of the total salaries and allowances received by each of the 109 senators from May 2023 to May 2025 for 12% performance and fulfillment of their statutory responsibilities to constituents (consumers) and reimbursement of all salaries and allowances received by the 40 senators who neglected their duties at the National Assembly to serve as legislators in the Pan-African Parliament and the Parliament of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), respectively. This is in violation of Section 68 of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 Constitution, which forbids senators from serving concurrently in both the National Assembly and another legislative body.

The correspondence was sent to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, the Executive Vice-Chairman of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, the Federation’s Accountant-General, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Secretary-General of the ECOWAS Parliament, and the Secretary-General of the Pan-African Parliament.

As per the legislative counsel, the Senate has only performed 12 percent of its duties since the 10th National Assembly began in May 2023, according to the data currently in existence.

They are thus asking the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Tribunal to order the senators to pay back to the national treasury, through the Accountant-General of the Federation, 78 percent of the salaries and benefits they received between May 2023 and May 2025 because of the poor quality of their services.

According to the letter, “The Association of Legislative Drafting and Advocacy Practitioners, or ALDRAP, is a professional association of legislative lawyers that encourages legislators and other members of the legislative ecosystem to adhere to the provisions of the Nigerian Constitution.” Our strategies to enforce compliance include both public education and public interest litigation.

“We have attested to an affidavit of facts that back up the claims we make in this letter. It’s contained or connected. The 109 senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria’s Senate serve as representatives of the constituents, or consumers, of the legislative services they provide.

The following demands are made by us, the constituents and consumers, in accordance with the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission Act of 2018 because we are unhappy with the legislative services rendered by the aforementioned 109 senators:

From May 2023 to the present, 78% of the total wages and benefits received by each of the 109 senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria’s Senate should be returned to the Accountant-General of the Federation (equivalent to ₦15,000,000 per senator per month).

Each of the 40 senators that serve in the ECOWAS and Pan-African parliaments receives ₦15,000,000 in salary and benefits, which are calculated at a minimum of 10 sessions annually.

“Please be advised that we will have no choice but to initiate legal proceedings before the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Tribunal in compliance with the applicable laws if you do not comply within seven days of the date of this letter.”

Sections 69 and 104 of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act, 2018, Section 130 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), 2015, and Sections 6 and 14 of the Nigerian Constitution all contributed to the suit’s public interest, according to an affidavit filed on May 27, 2025, and deposed to by Jesse Amuga.

According to the affidavit, “The subject matter of this suit relates to the performance or otherwise of statutory duties imposed on the 109 senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria by sections 4, 88, and 89 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), which include lawmaking, oversight, and effective representation.”

Between June 2023 and May 2025, the 10th Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria engaged in a legislative pattern and behavior that amounts to failure and neglect of the statutory duties for which they have collected public funds through salaries and allowances, thus enriching themselves at the expense of the public.

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“I rely on the empirical findings and observations made by Dr. Tonye Clinton Jaja, a legislative law and legal drafting expert with 21 years of professional legal experience, as stated in his Open Letter to the Senate President, Senator Godswill Obot Akpabio, and the Majority Leader, Senator Michael Opeyemi Bamidele, dated May 26, 2025… The following specifics and real-world examples of legislative failure were among the things that Dr. Jaja’s letter did highlight:

A. The National Anthem Act, 2024 and the Bill for Extension of the Tenure of the Inspector-General of Police were two Executive Bills that were passed by the 10th Senate in less than a week without any public hearings or serious examination.

In violation of Section 305 of the 1999 Constitution, which calls for a two-thirds majority vote, the Senate allegedly passed a law on March 20, 2025, endorsing the declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State. C. Based on an analysis of 475 bills considered since 2023, the Order Paper Parliamentary Monitoring Group found that just 5.4% of them addressed security, and only 7.3% dealt with the two most important issues facing Nigerians: food security and agriculture.

The 10th Senate failed in its monitoring and representative functions because it prioritized approving executive-sponsored laws over private member bills and public interest problems.

The affidavit, which the Daily Post allegedly obtained, further stated, “The National Assembly Committees on Constitutional Review have consistently received ₦5 billion since 2011.” Since Senator Ike Ekweremadu, the Senate Committee on Constitutional Review’s chairman at the time, was accused of spending more than ₦8 billion of the cash, some people have demanded that they return the money. The argument put up by Senator Michael Opeyemi Bamidele that the 2025 Budget was subjected to due diligence and that 39 meetings were had with the Executive prior to the Tax Reform Bills being passed is selective and at odds with the Senate’s actual legislative record.

Senator Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President, openly declared that senators were not chosen to “fight” the Executive, suggesting that the Senate is not supposed to hold the Executive branch of government accountable. This is a clear infraction of the separation of powers doctrine and the legislative oversight duty. However, this same Senate has taken harsh and excessively confrontational measures against one member, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, including: (a) imposing an unlawful six-month suspension that is longer than allowed by Senate Rules and court precedent. (b) She was the target of a number of legal actions, media campaigns, and purported criminal charges.

This uneven use of legislative authority, which includes hostility toward a fellow lawmaker yet submissiveness to the Executive, is a glaring disregard for the Senate’s institutional duty as a separate branch of government. While collecting salaries and allowances, the senators of the 10th Assembly violated the value-for-money principle by not fulfilling their constitutionally mandated duties of lawmaking, oversight, and constituent representation. As a result, they must return 78% of their salaries and allowances for the June 2023–May 2025 period.

Aside from the aforementioned, a number of National Assembly members violated Section 68(1)(a) of the Constitution, which forbids sitting lawmakers from holding any other office of profit or emolument, by accepting appointments and being sworn in as members of the Pan-African Parliament and the ECOWAS Parliament in April 2024 while still serving as Nigerian lawmakers.

In the affidavit, the legislative attorneys also mentioned that the senators in question have been taking part in legislative activities within Pan-African or ECOWAS organizations while maintaining their salaries, benefits, and privileges as members of the Nigerian National Assembly.

“The principle of legislative integrity and accountability is violated by this dual occupancy and compensation from both offices, which is against the Constitution.”

Nigerian citizens would continue to suffer from the continuous abuse of legislative power, the association argued, if the court did not order the appropriate authorities to look into and start the process of recovering the salary and allowances paid, as well as to disqualify lawmakers who were not eligible.

The court must “grant the reliefs sought in this suit” for the sake of justice and public trust, they insisted.

OrderPaper, Nigeria’s premier independent parliamentary monitoring organization, revealed in an October 2024 report that more than half of the bills introduced in the Senate between June 2023 and May 2024 were repeats of those from previous assemblies, especially the previous 9th Assembly.

The report also revealed that nearly one-third of the bills dealt with in the House of Representatives during that same period were reintroduced from the previous assembly.

The results showed that there was a significant discrepancy between Bills’ sponsorship and advancement. OrderPaper’s analysis showed that only 19 of the 475 bills the Senate introduced between June 2023 and May 2024 were passed into law.

Additionally, the performance report highlighted a lack of attention to important national issues, as only 5.8% of House and 7.3% of Senate bills dealt with agricultural and food security. Security-related bills made up 7.2% of House bills and 5.4% of Senate bills, respectively.

According to the report, “bills addressing these issues remain few, with many not progressing past the first reading,” despite the noteworthy difficulties that residents in these areas have faced recently.

In its first year, from May 2023 to May 2024, the 10th Senate proposed 464 bills, but only 19 of them were passed, according to the documents that are currently available.

Only seven bills were passed during the second year, which ran from May 2024 to May 2025, out of 341 that were introduced. By December 2024, the House of Representatives had only passed 114 of the 1,727 bills that had been filed.