Ebonyi: Elders council backs Tinubu’s subsidy removal
… calls for workers salary increment
By Chijioke Njoku
The Ebonyi State Chairman Council of Elders, Engr. Benjamin Okah at the weekend advocated for immediate increment in workers salaries to cushion the effect, caused by the subsidy removal by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Okah, a former commissioner for Public Utility to Ebonyi State government, made this known while speaking with newsmen, some hours after the inauguration of 21 Senior Special Assistants, SSA, and Special Assistants, SA, by the governor, Francis Nwifuru in Abakaliki, capital of Ebonyi state.
He however, applauded President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for taken a bold step to remove the fuel subsidy, which according to him, has made few individuals to be erroneously rich, leaving a great number of Nigerians to suffer in abject poverty.
He said: “”And some persons have license to import the refined products. And because the cost of the importation of the product is high, the Nigeria government subsidized the price to get it to a lower cost to be affordable to ordinary citizens. In its own, you can say that it is good to subsidize the products. Products that are produced in the country, and not products that are imported into the country.
“And because of that, the cost of petroleum products, is now cheaper in Nigeria than other countries. And then, you have smuggling of petroleum products of Nigeria into nearby other countries, and creating another scarcity.
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“And so, few persons are making a lot of money from it, it is also reported that some fraudulent importers of the refined products do not declare properly of what they have been imported. In other words, they over declare, and made supplies short of what they have declared. They therefore, collect subsidy higher than what they imported.
“This has created an artificial millionaires. Millionaires who don’t have anything to produce in Nigeria, who don’t add real value. It is a scam and very fraudulent and of no use, because at the end of the day, Nigerians have very low income. They are not able to make purchases, our purchasing rate is very poor. And therefore, businesses are going down so much.
“It has actually created a lot of poverty for the majority and wealth for the very few. And so, I support entirely and I’m very glad that the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took the bul by the horn and remove the subsidy.
The Chairman council of Elder, Okah further called on Ebonyi State governor, Francis Nwifuru to govern the state very by reinvigoratIng and re-empowering various sectors and institutions to function.
“The governor should govern very well. He should not choose a particular area to concentrate on. What we need is administration, governance and should reinvigorate and re-empower the institutions to function. If every institution is functioning, then governance has become very simple.
“The health system should be working. educational sector should be working. And different sectors of governance should be made to work as it supposed to be. No area should be relegated. Every sector should be working. And the supplementary budget proposal of the government, should be followed strictly, according to what is presented. When this is done, Ebonyi State within two years, will be what it supposed to be.
“The civil service should be working properly, and other areas should be given adequate attention through budgetary allocation. I don’t believe that one section should be jettisoned for another section. If that happens, then a section of the government will be suffering. The governor’s job is to ensure that every ministry is working” he stated.
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