Friday 27 February 2009

Salary Cut Meaningless Without Seriousness

By Hakeem Babalola
Government Policy

Yar'Adua is right on the spot with the two adjectives: untenable and unjustifiable. But "Mr. President" spoils the sentence with the use of "in the present circumstances" which should be replaced with "at all times". Although Nigerian political officers do not deserve the current salaries they earn, yet salary cut is meaningless and it is probably being initiated to score a cheap political point rather than in the interest of the country read more

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brother Hakeem thanks for the infromation, about the salaries of the Senate and House of Reps? Our democracy has become a joke that we are now a laughing stock in some part of the world.Rather than call ours a democracy,we can call it squandercracy.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the information. There is a Yoruba saying that if the person been deceived does not know the deceiver certainly knows. Good enough, in this case both parties are quite well aware of the deception.

The most effective way to cut the cost of governance is to drastically reduce the number of personnel. The numbers of personal assistant to special assistant and all such rubbish. What are we doing with so many ministers and special assistants?

In line with my believe, all this rhetoric will not bring change. Let us follow it up with concrete action. Most effective is lobbying. All those that have friends in the corridor of power and believe in project Nigeria should get to work. Let the pastors and the imams preach it. Let us put pressure on them in public and in private.

God help us!!!

Anonymous said...

This, I dare say, is the crux of the matter...

"As far as I am concerned, the salary cut which has been widely reported to affect 16, 540 public office holders, is an indirect way of promoting further corruption in the sense that a political officer who is corrupt even when his salary was "fat" will only device another technique to loot now that his salary has been cut. This salary cut isn't a bold move at all. A bold move would have been a permanent agenda that will make these political office holders accountable to the people. A bold move would have been to implement a policy that will eradicate corruption - our unofficial ageless recession - once and for all. I wonder if this approach is being undertaken in the interest of the country or simply to score a cheap political point - as usual".

One can't but wonder what the President's numerous Special Advisers and Assistants are doing if a salary cut is the best he could come up with. It's pretty obvious our 'dedicated' public officers will make up the difference somehow. After all, who exactly is looking? And even if anyone is looking, who will catch them?

A wise and more realistic move is to tackle our issues on corruption, and look for ways to put all the money that the FIRS rakes in every year to good use for our national good. And, may I add, not with committees like Vision 2010 or 2020 that will sit forever without tangible results.

Anonymous said...

Yaradua is obviously clueless and without focus. This pay cut is actually trying to score nonexistent political points; same with the #5 cut in petrol pricing. We all know that it is not salaries that pay for the huge SUV's, foreign trips, mansions and concubines our self indulgent political class have equated to governance.

Our president's blindness and lack of commonsense is really amazing.

Mr presido, if you can think outside your 'drug' induced haze; plug the waste and fire half of your cabinet. Take BOLD steps to show you are serious. All these pussyfooting and 'walking on thin ice' approach to major national issues just show you are just trying to hang on and mark time until you or your tenure expires.(whichever comes first)

Anyway, since the international price of crude is likely to fall further during the coming summer months, its obvious the roof is about to come crashing down on everyone. Maybe Yaradua will finally wake up when there is no more money to pay state and federal workers, the police and the armed forces.

Maybe this is what Nigeria really needs.