By Camillus Eboh
ABUJA (Reuters) - A Nigerian court on Friday ordered two former ministers to give back the bulk of their salaries, arguing they were paid more than the rule books allowed.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo had poached the pair from prestigious jobs in international institutions in 2003 and offered them salaries in dollars that were much higher than what other ministers receive in the local naira currency.
If upheld, the ruling could diminish the government's ability to hire professionals from the private sector or from international organisations. Such technocrats formed the backbone of a team of economic reformers credited with cleaning up Nigerian public finances since 2003.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was head-hunted from the World Bank, where she was a vice president, to become Nigeria's finance minister. She held the job for three years.
Oluyemi Adeniji left his job as a United Nations envoy for Sierra Leone and Liberia to join Obasanjo's cabinet, first as foreign minister and then as interior minister. He was in government for four years.
Prominent human rights lawyer Gani Fawehinmi had filed a suit challenging the ministers' salaries in 2004. He lost in a lower court which ruled he was not entitled to take legal action, but an Abuja court of appeal overturned that ruling.
"It is illegal for ministers to receive salaries over and above what is prescribed by the Public Officers' Salary Act," said Judge Abdullahi Aboki of the court of appeal.
DIASPORA FUND
The federal government and the two ex-ministers can appeal.
Paul Nwabuikwu, a spokesman for Okonjo-Iweala, said the salaries had not come from federal government coffers but from a Diaspora Fund designed to encourage professionals abroad to return home. The fund pools government and donor money, he said.
"Even if you take the judgment at face value, to whom should they pay the money back?" said Nwabuikwu.
Fawehinmi's suit said Okonjo-Iweala was paid $247,000 per year while Adeniji received $120,000 per year. Official figures were not available and Adeniji could not be contacted.
The act stipulates that ministers should be paid 795,000 naira per year, although they receive allowances and benefits in kind that are worth many times that amount.
Okonjo-Iweala has commented publicly on her salary in the past, saying that she wanted it to be clear to everyone that she was earning enough legitimately to maintain her family's standard of living without being suspected of corruption.
Nigeria is one of the world's most corrupt nations, according to Transparency International, and it is common for government officials to adopt ostentatious lifestyles that do not correspond to their salaries.
Fawehinmi's suit contained no allegation of corruption against Okonjo-Iweala or Adeniji, who both have clean records.
As finance minister, Okonjo-Iweala brought macro-economic stability to Nigeria after years of chaos. She introduced budget discipline, windfall oil revenue savings and a raft of other policies that won support from the International Monetary Fund.
Her policies and her presence in government were one of the main factors that persuaded rich creditor nations to write off $18 billion of Nigerian sovereign debt in a landmark deal.
