25042021 - B/Haram bandits almost succeeding in their mission CAN president warns

SUNDAY VANGUARD, APRIL 25, 2021, PAGE 9
By Victor Ahiuma-Young
Association of Senior Civil
Servant of Nigeria, ASCSN,
has warned governors
contemplating to renege on the
N30, 000 minimum wage or
accumulate arrears of salaries and
other benefits to have a rethink to
avoid workers’ revolt.
President of the ASCSN, Dr.
Tommy Etim Okon, in a chat with
Sunday Vanguard, warned that
Organised Labour would not
accept a situation where
governors would compound
workers’ woes in today’s
economic situation.
Okon spoke just as Kano State
has reverted to N18, 000 minimum
wage and Kaduna is retrenching
several thousand employees on
account of cash crunch.
Analysts fear that other states under
financial pressure occasioned by
dwindling revenues may soon
follow suit.
“It is unfortunate that some
governors are plotting to
renege on the N30, 000
minimum wage”,
the union leader
said. “This is
sad because the
governors that
were elected by
the poor people
to protect their
•Okon
interest are the
same people
championing to
continually
impoverish the
poor masses.
“We are
talking about
mere N30, 000 minimum wage that would
not be able to take anybody home considering
the level of inflation, considering the level of
taxation, high cost of utilities such as electricity
tariff and fuel pump price that the government
have continued to increase their prices and so
on.
“Yet, the governors do not see the reason to
pay N30, 000 minimum wage.
“Some governors are even contemplating
going back to the N18, 000 outlawed
minimum wage.
“Leadership is not by force, if the governors
are not capable of meeting the demand of the
workers, if they are not capable of paying the
minimum wage which they agreed to pay, and
has been signed into law by the President of
the country, they should resign.
“It is as simple as that. As Organised Labour,
we will not take it. If the governors say they
cannot pay, this is the best time for them to
recall what happened during the #End SARS
protest.
“If the governors reneged on the N30,000
minimum wage, that would cause a very
serious misapplication of leadership
principles.
“We advise them to toe the path of honour,
rethink and stick with the N30, 000 minimum
wage. They should not force workers to revolt.
Accumulation of salary
arrears
“In most cases, you look at misapplication
in terms of management of resources. If
government has taken workers as their priority,
knowing very well that they are partners in
progress, the issue of unpaid wages and
accumulation of salary arrears would not
occur in the first instance.
“If a government honestly accumulates
debts especially wages and other benefits, at
the end of it, if such government starts paying,
we will know that the government is making
frantic effort to pay.
“But there are some who deliberately
accumulate debts. They do not want to pay
Too late to stop paying
N30, 000 minimum wage,
workers warn govs
• ‘Govs who can’t pay should resign’
because they are not accountable and because
government is seen as a continuum, so when
they leave office, the next government will
inherit the debt.
“It is sad. They do not have any moral
justification to have gotten to the level of
accumulating these debts because it is the
workers that are suffering.
“A single worker has a responsibility of a
minimum of five persons to take care
of. In the African context
where we have the
issue of extended
family system, the
governors should
know that workers
should not be a
slave and
overstretched
further. These are
things that can
provoke people to
revolt.
Chain of
political
aides
“This is the application of management
ethics we talk about. Those aides are
redundant. They do not have anything useful
to do. Why not lay them off and concentrate
on those who are implementing the policies
of government? “The aides are just political
settlements. They are not useful to the system.
Why do you engage them?
“These are people perpetuating evil in the
economy because they do not understand the
working dynamics of administration, they are
just being political.
“So, why not disengage them and
concentrate on the workers that are useful to
the system?
“Each time we talk, they say why are you
probing and looking at security vote. Security
vote can pay huge number of workers and
you will be at peace.
“What is happening today is from the family
because if the family is unsettled, there is bound
to be insecurity. Because they do not know the
next line of action, they are looking forward
to surviving. “Unfortunately, the governor is
busy engaging political aides after political
aides.
“There are governors with well over 2, 000
political aides. What are they doing? If you
think that the aides are important, and you
are paying them not less than N150, 000
monthly, and a worker is looking for just N30,
000, and you say you can’t pay, it is immoral.
“One of your aides earning N150, 000, that
money can pay about five workers. Yet, you
say the N30, 000 is too much. Don’t you have
conscience? Let us be fair for once.
“Don’t forget that we go to the same market,
our children have to pay school fees and other
utilities including hospital bills.
“Most governors have never taken the pains
to look at the educational aspect of it because
there is no free education. The worker will
pay WAEC, NECO and others. “Sometimes,
one thinks whether these governors are living
in the moon. If they are operating under this
economy, they should know that N30, 000 is
nothing in this economic reality.
No money to pay
“How can the governors say they do not have
money to pay just N30, 000 minimum wage?
We do not believe such fabulous story.
“We know they have money. Probably, what
they mean is that they not have enough money
for frivolities and the expensive lifestyles they
are used to.
“The workers that you are denying their
rights are the same workers in the system and
they know you have money.
“Are they not the ones implementing the
policies, don’t they know when you come to
take money? Are the workers not the same
people who know how money disappears in
form of capital flight?
“So, you cannot tell workers that there is no
money to pay.
“The workers cut across all strata. They
know the movement of money in the system.
“The governor’s driver is a worker. The cook
is a worker. The gateman is a worker. The
gardener is a worker. They know when you
move your girlfriends and women friends here
and there, what you buy, what you give out
and so on. You cannot say there is no money to
'Govs should explore AfCFTA platform, SMEs, rationalise cost, prune workforce’
Continued from page 8
readily take care of expenditure. The
perennial shortage of revenue amidst
escalating needs for public services leads
government to over trade. All tiers of
government are currently bedeviled by this
malaise. To survive, state governments need
to rationalise costs and boost revenue.
“All options to ensure fiscal consolidation
should cover all areas of leakages and
overburden and finally at this critical time
of suppressed revenue generation,
expenditures should be tailored to areas of
greatest need.”
Financial crisis getting
worse daily —Analyst
Also, Head of Investment and Research
at Fidelity Securities Limited, Victor
Chiazor, said: “Going by the year 2020
report for internally generated revenue by
the states and FCT released by the National
Bureau of Statistics, NBS, we can see clearly
that the financial crisis across the states
seems to be getting worse by the day.
“Having reported that just three states
have above five percent Internally
Generated Revenue, IGR, contribution to
revenue while 14 states have below one
percent IGR contribution to revenue, it is
clear that almost all the states are being
run by federal government. They will run
into a deep crisis if those allocations stop
or are reduced by government.”
Structures and policies
Consequently, Chiazor said: “As a matter
of urgency, many states will have to reduce
the cost of governance to enable them to
release capital for other viable projects.
Structures and policies that would expand
its tax net as well as capture most of its
informal sector would need to be
implemented while leakages need to be
closed.
“States would also need to create
incentives to attract investors as most
investors may not be open to investing in
most of these states except these incentives
are strong enough to move them. The option
of wage reduction may not be widely
accepted but may be necessary if the
revenue profile of the states fails to improve.
But that will also hurt the populace as more
people are likely to fall further below the
poverty line.”
Reduce unnecessary
expenditure —Kurfi
Managing Director, APT Securities
Limited, Mallam Garba Kurfi, said: “There
is a need for state governments to reduce
unnecessary expenditure, take value for
money spend and increase sources of
revenue. There is a need for them to reduce
costs of running government.”
“There is also the need to address
inflation, especially now that it is more than
18 percent before reducing wages.”
Workforce must be reduced
— Obiaraeri
An investment banker and forensic
auditor, Dr. Nnaemeka Obiaraeri,
suggested the overhauling of the country’s
fiscal, governance, political and
constitutional architecture as a solution to
the financial crisis facing the federal and
state governments.
He told Sunday Vanguard that for states
to survive, the public workforce must be
pruned down to such a level that their
overall costs would not be more than 20
percent of total revenue.
The forensic auditor said: “Nigeria may
end up netting in about N6.79trillion from
crude oil sales in 2021. However, just like
in 2019 and 2020, what may end up getting
into the federation account to be shared by
the three tiers of government may not be
more than N2.5trillion. The extra
N4.2trillion will, as usual, be frittered away.
“We can only end the madness by totally
deregulating the downstream oil and gas
sector.
“To worsen Nigeria’s current decayed
fiscal condition, those in power - the
President, 36 governors and members of the
national and state assemblies have refused
to restructure Nigeria. They refuse to move
63 out of the 68 items in the Exclusive List
of the 1999 constitution to the Residual List.
Such would have allowed devolution of
power and resource control to engender
production and healthy competitions
amongst the constituent units that make up
Nigeria.
Poverty
“With the extreme poverty in the country,
heightened insecurity/breakdown of law
and order in the land and monstrous
corruption at all levels of government, the
only thing that can save Nigeria from being
formally stamped into the league of failed
and disintegrated states, is for us to overhaul
the fiscal, governance, political and
constitutional architecture of the country.
“Doing this will help us to have a lean
public sector workforce, part-time public
office holders, and lean government
overhead. This will allow us to unlock longterm
private sector and global investments
in the country.
“Anything short of the above
recommendations will only spell doom for
the continued existence of Nigeria as one
country. Nigeria is comatose. No life
support machine can save her except we go
back to the 1960 constitutional and fiscal
framework.’’