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Our demands from National Assembly, by NLC

By Yetunde Ebosele
28 July 2015   |   12:01 am
THE Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has appealed to the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki and the entire leadership of the National Assembly to provide the enabling environment for job creation in both the public and private sectors of Nigeria’s economy.
Saraki

Saraki

THE Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has appealed to the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki and the entire leadership of the National Assembly to provide the enabling environment for job creation in both the public and private sectors of Nigeria’s economy.

In his address during a courtesy visit to the Senate President, NLC President, Ayuba Wabba described unemployment in the country as a reflection of the “scale of the economic decay”.

According to him, the National Assembly under the leadership of the Senate President needs to play a role in ensuring that the required legislations are put in place to provide the enabling environment for job creation.

He explained that there is hardly any household in Nigeria without at least “one long time unemployed graduate”, adding that, “some estimates put youth unemployment at over 50 million”.

Wabba said the last minimum wage Act was promulgated by the National Assembly in 2011, pointing out that, “as we also indicated in this year’s May Day address, the five-year circle, during which the National Minimum Wage is due for review, is here”.

Explaining further, he said: “In addition, the devaluation of the naira from N150 to $1, to about N242 to $1, today underscores the grim situation for salary earners in the country against the fact that our economy is import-driven. “The devaluation, in simple economic terms, means that the purchasing power of the ordinary Nigerian wage earner is grossly devalued.

As a result of this grim economic reality, Your Excellency, Congress will soon submit a New Minimum Wage demand, which we hope will be negotiated by the traditional tripartite negotiating team of Government, Employers and Organised Labour. “Our hope is that when the end product of the negotiation is brought before the National Assembly for legislation, it would be treated with dispatch”, Wabba said.

He informed the Senate President that NLC has serious cause to worry about the high cost of governance across board, “from local, state and federal levels”. Going down memory lane, the NLC President said: “Some fifteen years or so ago, when the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), fixed salaries of councilors at N150, 000 per month, then more than the salary of a university professor, many well-meaning Nigerians kicked against the unreasonableness of such a remuneration package”.

He added: “Information available to us indicate that as far back as 2009, the RMAFC put the salaries and Allowances of “Certain Political, Public and Judicial Office holders numbering 17,474 at N1.126 trillion annually. “This indicates that the earnings of political office holders were such a big drain on the revenue of the country and were clearly unsustainable. “The level of financial expenditure were, such that a Senator and a Representative earn more than 100 times what a graduate on grade level 8, step 15 earns annually.

The ratio, when compared to what a level 17, step 9 officer in the federal civil service earns annually, was more than 20 times. “Your Excellency, you need not to be told that we are again back to poor revenue from our main source of foreign exchange –crude oil.

This, combined with the excesses of our political elite in the mismanagement of our national resources, has once again called to question the issue of the high cost of governance in the country. “In response to this, some state governors have reduced their salaries by 50%, and the President and Vice President recently joined by ordering that their salaries should also be reduced by 50%.

The National Assembly has also acted by reducing its annual budget from N150 billion to N115 billion as symbolic gesture that our legislators are in tune with our austere times. “Your Excellency, Nigerians generally do not believe that these gestures from the two arms of government are far reaching enough to address the question of high cost of governance in the land.

For the President, the Vice President and the governors, the point had been rightly made that they do not depend on their salaries and allowances for their upkeep anyway, as the state provides for them 100%, therefore even if they part with 95% of their entitlements, it will not affect them in any material way.

Secondly, as the Governor of Ebonyi State recently argued, the salaries of key government officers are not necessarily the only source of the wastage and high cost of governance in the country. “For the legislature, Your Excellency, Nigerians are concerned and wants explanations on how the National Assembly budget, which in 2003 was N23.347 billion, rose to N66.488 billion in 2007, and then climbed to N104.825 billion in 2008.

In 2010, Your Excellency, under the watch of your predecessor, the budget of the National Assembly reached an all-time record jump to N154.2 billion. “To compound the problem of comprehension, your predecessor, obviously working with your colleagues in the red and green chambers, wrapped your earnings and expenditure in utmost secrecy, and by 2011, the details of the National Assembly budget were no longer accessible having used your legislative powers to move it into a first-line charge on the federation account, like the judiciary, INEC, UBE, and the NDDC.

In 2007, National Assembly’s budget for instance, had eight sub-heads under recurrent, and another eight sub-heads under capital, which were N59.806 billion and N6.594 billion respectively. “By 2011, all that appeared under the National Assembly budget was N150 billion without any breakdown or details. “Your Excellency, our principal concern is to have in the National Assembly an open, transparent and accountable budget based on the expenditure items of the legislative arm of government.

In calling for transparency and accountability, it is also our belief that those who seek to diminish the significance of this concern by saying that the budget represents a small fraction of the national budget, misses an important point in the accountability principle.

For the purposes of comparing standards, Your Excellency may recall that some years back, some members of the British House of Commons, from the Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties, lost their seats on account of fiddling with their constituency expenses”, he said.

He explained that it is the hope of NLC that the 8th National Assembly under the leadership of Saraki as Senate President will take deliberate steps to come “clean with Nigerians, and put to rest all the controversy around the earnings of the members of Senate and the House of Representatives”.

On deregulation, he recalled that, in 2009, NLC Committee on Deregulation of the Downstream Sector of the Petroleum Industry, headed by Deputy President, Peters Adeyemi, Saraki as Chairman of the Governors Forum, at Transcorp Hilton Hotel.

Explaining further, Wabba said: “You were accompanied to that meeting by Governor Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State. Our Committee held useful discussions with you and your views were reflected in the publication entitled; “Nigeria Labour Congress Report of the Committee on Deregulation (2009)”

WABBA

Wabba

He said NLC also kept tab of Saraki’s contributions in the chambers of the Senate “which helped to expose the fraud around fuel subsidy in 2011–2012. “Since the last general elections, and the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari; we have noticed a renewed, orchestrated and well-oiled campaign for the removal of fuel subsidy, which is otherwise dressed in the toga of deregulation of the downstream of the petroleum sector.

We have resisted joining the debate in this rehashed campaign because we belief that the new President knows far more than many of those advising him to remove fuel subsidy, haven served as Petroleum Minister himself, and was involved in the establishment of two of our four refineries.

His comments on the issue also show that he is not likely to be easily hoodwinked into taking any rash and undigested decision on this. “Your Excellency, since the top level dialogue we had during the tenure of President Yar’Adua in 2009, which led to the production of the Report I referred to earlier, not much had happened to address the concerns of organized Labour.

Instead, there has been systematic degeneration and increased fraud in the sector. “What also baffles us at the NLC is that some otherwise intelligent people are now arguing that on account of the inherent fraud and corruption in the subsidy regime and the oil industry as a whole, Nigerians should be made to suffer on account of the activities of these fraudsters by removing the subsidy. This is hardly rational.

For us, those trying to take advantage of the subsidy situation, and have committed fraudulent acts, should be tracked down, caught and made to face the full punishment for their nefarious activities. “Our main point that Nigeria cannot, as an oil producing country, continue to be dependent on importation of petroleum products for our internal consumption remains unassailable.

The one sustainable way for us in the NLC as we articulated in the Deregulation Report is that we must make our four refineries to work at full capacity, and build new ones to take care of the shortfall, which the current refineries working at full capacity, are unable to meet.

With the recent devaluation of the naira by the CBN, as long as we continue on the route of petroleum importation, ordinary Nigerians cannot afford to bear the cost of this products locally as the more the value of our currency depreciates, the costlier the imported products would be.

It is our hope that the Senate under your leadership would side with the Nigerian people in the event that those pushing for increasing the hardship on Nigerians get a hearing of the executive arm. For us in the NLC, we will always be on the side of the people; in opposing any such move”, Wabba added.

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