The Ebonyi State Chairman Council of Elders, Engr. Benjamin Okah at the weekend advocated for an 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, SSAs, and Special Assistants, SAs, by Governor Francis Nwifuru in Abakaliki, capital of Ebonyi state.
He however, applauded President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for taking 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 a license to import the refined products. And because the cost of the importation of the product is high, the Nigerian government subsidized the price to get it to a lower cost to be affordable to ordinary citizens. On 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 in other countries. And then, you have the smuggling of petroleum products from Nigeria into nearby other countries, creating another scarcity.
"And so, few persons are making a lot of money from it, it is also reported that some fraudulent importers of refined products do not declare properly what they have been imported. In other words, they over declare, and made supplies short of what they have declared. They, therefore, collect subsidies higher than what they imported.
"This has created artificial millionaires. Millionaires who don't have anything to produce in Nigeria, 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 created a lot of poverty for the majority and wealth for the very few. And so, I support it entirely and I'm very glad that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took the bull 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. the educational sector should be working. And different sectors of governance should be made to work as it is supposed to. 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 is 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 started.
