By: Ali Tijjani Hassan
Previously, in the month of August, the Yobe State Government under the leadership of Hon. Mai Mala Buni, reduced the salary of it, workers, from the new minimum wage system to the old minimum wage system. Later the Government official held a press conference regarding the matter and concludes that: the depletion is temporary and they already put a hand on, to get rid of it soon.
Afterward, we thought that the decrement wouldn’t last long, but sadly, the matter vis-à-vis workers’ September salary is still relevant.
A state with the highest rate of poverty in northern Nigeria like Yobe, should not be ready for this unprecedented demotion of salary that affects the lively activities of its citizens.
After this recent ruthless depletion of their remuneration by the state government, these decrements strangled the gut of lower-class people over the state.
It’s dreadful, in the mid of this though life, price inflation and medium scarcity among the lower class individual. These decrements hurt the life of Yobe state civil servants deeply. People are living in abject poverty in which one cannot afford the regular meal of his family in the name of salary depletion.
Recently, after the just concluded APC’s local government party Congress, the Governor presented a gift of Peugeot 406 brand car, worth 3 million to each and every local government party chairman, as a congratulatory gift of assuming office. If you multiplied 3 million by 17 (no of local government in the state) you find that the amount is about 50 million, so far! In a state that workers salaries got depleted by about 35 percent and the registration fee in the state university elevated by 37.2 percent. this is an absolute translation of one Hausa adage that said “Kura da shan duka Gardi da kwace kudi” which means that “Hyena was beaten while It Man takes the credit.”
So as people who are serving the state are not the same people who grabbed the dividend!
On another hand, the state government via some of it commissioned officials, is disbursing 50 thousand tendentiously to the local tomato vendors in the state capital city, Damaturu, without dropping the same alms to the local traders of the remaining 16 local governments.
What are the contributions of the tomato vendors to this state economically worth of this compensation? are they aid to boost the state GDP or generating their shares into the state internal revenue? If one of these statements is a true sequel to state economic growth, so what are the advantages of this ply and parti-pris rain, that restricted only to Damaturu local traders, when the students over the state are thirst and await of their local, stipend scholarship? Why not inject these resources into the educational sector for the betterment of Yobe’s tomorrow.
Besides, from all indication, the government are doing no flips of implementation to all these, owing to the fact that, they persist on this opportunistic and incalculable idea of baiting the hook targeted on poor men to shines and splash their pictures in the eye of unwitting folk in the forthcoming election, which may help them to attained power by then.
May Yobe succeed!
Ali Tijjani Hassan writes from Potiskum and can be reached via [email protected]
