Mr President NULGE, you’re welcome to Ilorin. Can we meet you ?
I am Comrade Ambali Hakeem, chief servant of local government workers.
What brought you to Ilorin?
We are here to achieve human capital development and scale up the knowledge and skill in terms of collective bargaining because you know that in Nigeria, we are passing through a very difficult phase, workers are finding it very difficult to even exist. So, we believe that in order to engage the employers of labour, in this instance, the local government, we need to sharpen our skills, we need to reorganise and reengineer our skills and position our leaders to be able to engage employers of labour to ensure that better welfare and renumeration are available to local government workers.
Although we have led the campaign to achieve 300 percent minimum wage rise for Nigerian workers, especially in local government, that is why we are here.
There have been much talk about autonomy for the local government; as the NULGE president what is the situation of things at the moment?
You know that the bill did not scale through at the National Assembly despite the heavy amount of mobilisation and sensitization and rally we have done. They can be because of the opposition by various state governments, occasioned by greed and zeal to continue to pilfer local government resources.
And again they also capitalise on the nature of the Nigerian society because local government autonomy struggle is not only for NULGE, it is for you and it is for me, you’re from rural community, you are from the local government, if your local government performs better you can go to sleep, you can go to your village. Now, I know before you go to your village you have to take special prayer or fasting so that you won’t be attacked by bandits and kidnappers.
So, it is because that level of government that is very important is missing in action because they have been pauperised. Local governments have continued to witness financial rape from the state governments and that has crippled effects and activities of the local government. So, for us our focus is to achieve a more vibrant and stronger, people-driven and people-centred local government in Nigeria.
As you can see people are frustrated; joblessness and hopelessness, massive insecurity, infrastructural decay and there is food insecurity in Nigeria. The way to go if we want to achieve community security is to grant local government autonomy so that we will have administrative autonomy, financial autonomy as well as political autonomy so that elections conducted at local government will be a direct reflection of political aspiration of the Nigerian people . What is going on is not an election at the local government, it is coronation, adoption and promotion of those political jobbers.
On the issue of cushioning the effects of the removal of oil subsidy, what is the position of NULGE?
We have about five solutions to it. One , we should consider alternative energy supply. There is the need for the Nigerian government as a matter of urgency to assemble technocrats who should work on solar energy as a means of alternative energy to power our various homes and offices. Secondly, we should also look at the operation of compressed natural gas (CNG). We have large volume of natural gas that are being wasted and to make it worse we are laying some pipelines now to channel it to some other countries whereby Nigerian market is yet to open up. Our vehicles should be converted to be running on CNG rather than being run on petroleum, this will cushion the effect of the subsidy as it will bring the price of litre of gas to about N100 , which is affordable and it is more durable; it is clean energy supply. Thirdly, the Nigerian government should cut down the size of governance.
We can’t continue to go on with retinue of aides , convoy of vehicles of 15 to 100 and you are saying that Nigerians should tighten their belts when you are going about in flying ‘agbada’. So, government should cut down the expenses, the allocation of N70 billion to National assembly is a wasteful expenditure. It’s unnecessary, they are already well-paid and well remunerated; you can see that in their opulence.
That money can go a long way if it is reinvested in the educational sector so that primary to secondary schools will have free education while university education should be subsidized. There is nowhere in the world that you don’t subsidize something. In America, in Britain everywhere there is subsidy. What we are saying is that subsidy thieves should be arrested and prosecuted. The issue of saying we have removed subsidy and allowing those people who stole large volume of Nigerian hard-earned resources and they are walking freely in the society, there must be a panel to ensure that they are probed and be made to refund parts of the money.
Again, we believe that it is time for us to address the issue of minimum wage, it should be increased by 300 percent. Why we demand for that is that , to use a small generator now you need to buy a fuel of nothing less than N3,000 and multiply N3,000 by 90 days, it is N90,000 and that doesn’t cater for your feeding and transportation.
So, for us we believe that when fuel was at about N165 per litre, we were earning N30,000 and now that it has gone to over N600, it is reasonable to move the minimum wage up by 300 percent. So, our belief is that apart from that, we should also provide logistics to move people around the country,; government should come out with their mass transit that will have electric vehicles and gas-relied vehicles which would move people around at a subsidised rate.
Number four, we must also look at the area of providing some agricultural equipments and fertilizers at subsidised rates for the farmers and also provide local security and that is what we are talking about local government autonomy so that farmers will be able to go back to farm provide food for Nigerian people.
We must also look at the bank interest rate. As a matter of urgency, we must instruct banks to grant loans to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) at single digit interest rate and farmers’ cooperatives. Those who want to invest in farming should have direct access to a reduced- interest rate loans so that the impact of this situation won’t be felt so much. When ( former president) Ibrahim Babangida wanted to do the same thing, he brought in a lot of structures to absorb the shock by bringing in several programmes such as ‘Better Life For Rural Women’ and when he took the loan and there was an inflation, we didn’t really feel it. So, our advice is that president Tinubu should also look at the package of Babangida , freshen it up and use part of it so that this pain will subside among Nigerians. And again it is unreasonable to increase school fees around this time, it is unreasonable, it is ungodly and it is unacceptable. And the issue of increments of electricity tariff should be jettisoned immediately so that Nigerians who are to witness better Nigeria would not die earlier than the date. It is only the living that enjoys the dividends of democracy. Government should be about people’s welfare.
