Nigerian Lawmakers are the highest paid in the world.

Dimeji Bankole, Speaker, House of Reps

A Senator earns N30,794.52, Rep receives N23,260.27 per hour..

A whopping 5% of Nigeria’s annual budget are spent on the 109 Senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives, leaving the remainder of the entire population of over 150 million to share 95%. An analytical calculation of this, reveal that at the end of the year, every other Nigerian is entitled to a miserly N1000.00. These excludes the over 70% of the budget that are shared by other arms of governments and their agents.
Although there is no universally accepted definition of “governance”, the popular usage of the term comprehends how a given country is governed; how the affairs of a state are administered and regulated and how a nation's political system functions in relation to the management or conduct of public affairs. It also embraces how national resources are managed and how relations
among the state, citizens and the private sector are regulated. Legislative scholars have paid almost no attention to explanations for the level of compensation provided to legislators, either within a country or cross-nationally, despite its importance to members and institutions. The provisions of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria enshrine the principle of separation of powers. 
The National Assembly occupies a prominent and pivotal position as the apex Law Making organ of government under the 1999 Constitution. A strong legislature is vital to a democratic system of government. A democratic government is based on a system of limited constitutional authority distributed to different decision structures. Legislators are supposed to ensures that major political decisions are taken after thorough deliberations. The ultimate goal of creating multiple power centers is to ensure that they checkmate each other and thereby prevent the emergence of a dictator. The intricate interrelationships between the multiple power centers and the mechanisms for ensuring that they work are the ingredients of constitutionalism. In this scheme of power sharing, the legislature is expected to play a more enhanced role in a presidential democracy than in a parliamentary democracy than involving in misappropriation of national wealth.
Despite the abject poverty that characterized standard of living of common Nigerian, the legislators have reasons to smile as they received N102.8bn total payment comprises of N11.8bn as salaries and N90.96bn as allowances. This represents 3.31% of total budget of N3.1trn in 2009. Is the taxpayer getting value for money from the current democratic structure? Are our elected politicians offering the taxpayers value for money? Should we outsource the nation legislative function to the private sector? Or should our elected politicians' salaries and allowances be performance related? While some of these questions may sound trivial, these were some of the thoughts going through the minds of average Nigerian with the news of jumbo salaries and corruption scandals that dominate the activities of the national assembly. 
According to Prof. MELVIN L M MBAO “Human rights are inextricably linked with democratic governance. They both require people conscious of their rights and duties, appropriate institutional arrangements, and the existence of a democratic civic culture that applies both to issues of national importance and to those of everyday life. The sense of belonging to a community is nurtured by individual responsibility and by a collective observance of democratic principles”. From this perspective, the unrestricted respect and defence of human rights by the way of even distribution of national wealth constitutes the foundation of an equitable and participatory society in which everyone helps to achieve the common good, and in which individualism and competition are balanced by leadership accountability.
With the figures above, particularly when considering the level of poverty in the country that even worries not only the citizens but also the international community, one can now imagine the reasons that propelled the litigation filed by some eminent politicians before Justice Gabriel Kolawole of Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, praying the court to compel relevant federal agencies including the National Assembly to publish for public consumption details of the salaries, allowances and other entitlements paid annually to members of the federal legislature since 2009. In 2009, Federal law makers, in the Upper and Lower house hourly remuneration (salary and allowances) based on the figures from a Nigeria prominent business news paper stood at N30794.52 and N23260.27 respectively for the year 2009 despite the allegation that the National Assembly only passed only three bills in the same year.  
The problem of uneven distribution of the national wealth demonstrated by the 469 Federal Law Makers' annual salary of US$78.6mn which represents 5% of Nigeria GDP of $165.7bn in 2009 as against US$93.1bn to 535 law maker in US and US$132.32bn to 1388 law makers in UK which represent less than 0.1% of their US$13.81trn and US$2.73trn GDPs respectively. The remaining 95% of the Nigeria GDP that accrued to 149,999,531 citizens is worrisome when considering the level of disparity in the country. This inequality, we believe, is capable of putting the possibility of Nigeria being universally praised for excellent record on political governance, exemplified by a relatively functioning multi-party democracy into serious doubt, since record on political governance can only be emphasized by a generally well managed economy. Likewise, Nigeria responses to the challenges of good governance, corruption and maladministration which are critically analysed against benchmarks reflecting international best practice might never be achieved with this level of inequality.
“Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State at the Royal African Society Forum at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London says there is no justification for Nigeria's per capita income (PCI) to be lower than those of Ghana and Cameroun, judging by the country's huge earning from oil since independence. He maintained said the country's Per Capita Income is abysmally low when compared to Ghana's $10,748 and Cameroun's $10,758 amongst others. He described the standard of living in Nigeria, as worse when compared to the independence era”. Contrary opinion shows that the argument of Mr. Amaechi only considers the true position of average Nigerian and not the political office holder as demonstrated in the case of law makers.
Justifying the remuneration of a developing county's legislators to that of the legislators in the developed economy can not be liken to Apples to Oranges but an Apple to a Lime. Per capita income means how much each individual receives, in monetary terms. It is the measure of the amount of money that each person earns in the country, of the yearly income generated in the country. Per capita income is often used as a measure of the wealth of the population of a nation, particularly when comparing countries with substantially different levels of wealth. Business Hallmark's analysis shows that a senator of Federal Republic of Nigeria total annual salary of US$198,400 and a House of Reps member with US$158,400 surpasses the US$2, 249 IMF estimated Nigerian GDP Per Capita by 8721.7% and 6943.1% respectively.