Since the removal of petroleum subsidy by President Bola Tinubu with its attendant painful consequences, various measures have been put in place to mitigate or address the excruciating hardship many Nigerians are experiencing.
For instance, the federal government quickly rolled out palliative plans for civil servants, pensioners and vulnerable Nigerians. President Tinubu also held a meeting with the business community with a view to prevailing on them to crash the cost of their commodities.
In addition, Mr President promised to give civil servants a living wage and constituted tripartite committee to work out acceptable national minimum wage for workers in the country. While the federal government has continued to come up with more humane policies, the other tiers of government, namely, states and local governments, are doing little or nothing to complement the efforts of the centre.
With the removal of fuel subsidy, states and local governments have witnessed an increase in revenue allocation through FAAC monthly meeting. Being closer to the grassroots, one expected them to emulate the federal government by devising more policies to alleviate the excruciating hardship in their respective areas.
Sadly, the state governors have remained mute and dormant. Though, Senate President Godswill Akpabio has recanted his earlier statement on N30 billion received by state governors, there may have been an element of truth in revelation. When the news of the largeness received from the Tinubu government by the governors broke, it took them a long time to refute it.
No amount of interventions by the federal government would bring down the soaring cost of living in the country, unless states and local governments play their own role. They need to do something urgently to arrest the devastating hunger in their localities. The federal government is determined to implement the new national minimum wage by June. Will state governments toe the same path?
The proposed new national minimum wage would be coming at a wrong time when some states governments are yet to implement the N30,000 minimum wage. The inability for these states to pay the last reviewed wage has caused untold hardship, diminished purchasing power and above all put their workforce below their contemporaries.
Like the federal government which promised to pay N35,000 wage award for six months to its workers, only few state governors have so far paid wage award to their workers since the removal of fuel subsidy last year. But the governors have no reasons to complain.
Available records have indicated that state governments have continued to receive funds in billions every month. They are no longer cash strapped. There is nothing wrong if they can pay wage award to their civil servants, pensioners and the vulnerable.
By doing so, millions people will be financially empowered. The perilous state of Nigeria’s economy which is hard hit by inflation can only bounce back to life through seamless implementation of intervention programmes by the three tiers of government.
It is high time state governors stopped the proverbial ostrich game and key into the various intervention programmes to stimulate the economies of their states and lessen the financial burden of poverty stricken majority.
Ibrahim Mustapha,
Pambegua, Kaduna state 08169056963.
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