Don asks Nigerians to oppose legislators’ jumbo pay

A literary activist and professor in North Carolina University in Charlotte, United States of America (USA), Tanure Ojaide, has frowned at the jumbo pay given to legislators in Nigeria not minding the fact that a vast majority of Nigerians live in crippling poverty and advised citizens to oppose it including other aspects of corruption, warning that doing nothing about it is dangerous to future generations.

Ojaide stated this in an interview with newsmen shortly before the opening ceremony of the 3rd International Conference on Tanure Ojaide: Life, Literature and Environment, held at Elechi Amadi Faculty of Humanities auditorium, University of Port Harcourt yesterday. “Look at the Senators and House members. They are earning so much money while millions of Nigerian are crying. As long as people don’t demonstrate, nothing will happen. Nowhere in the world are people paid as much as our politicians, not even in America, Japan, Germany- the richest economies.”

Speaking further, he enjoined the people of Niger Delta to be optimistic for a better tomorrow and urged them to exercise restraint in the face of provocative challenges facing the region. He condemned the pessimistic approach Nigerians look at things at all times and called for a change of attitude to kick start progress.He said that he believes in activism particularly using the literary approach, adding that those who hold down people must be challenged to make them uncomfortable.