We were not elected to only pay salaries, governors declare

• Resign if you can’t pay, workers tell govs

Olusola Fabiyi and Eniola Akinkuotu

Governors under the auspices of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, have said that they are not elected to only pay salaries of civil servants.

They argued they were also elected to provide good roads, electricity, education and other necessary amenities for the people.

They said there was no way they could perform magic if there were no funds to work with.

They therefore called for the examination of the national income in the last 14 years to enable them to agree on the contentious issue of minimum wage implementation.

Chairman of the NGF, who is also the Governor of Zamfara State, Abdulaziz Yari, made their position known to journalists after the meeting of the governors in Abuja on Wednesday night.

One of our correspondents reports that the committee working on the minimum wage is almost concluding negotiations on the matter.

The Federal Government had set a September date to roll out a new minimum wage for workers.

The Nigeria Labour Congress is proposing a minimum wage of N65,000 for workers, but the governors are insisting on the gradual implementation of the new wage,  if eventually approved.

Yari said it was a pity that state governors had been limited to the payment of salaries alone in their respective states.

He said the lack of funds had hindered them from carrying out their responsibilities in other sectors such as health, electricity, education, roads, among others.

On minimum wage, he said, “We have a committee of six which represents us in discussions in the committee headed by the Minister of Labour, Dr Chris Ngige.

“The committee has yet to give us the final report. They have given us an interim report that at the Federal Government level, over 82 per cent is being spent on overheads which cannot move the country forward in terms of infrastructure development and development that we need now.

“So, on our own part, we are saying we are going to look at how our income is taken from our final account from 14 years ago so that we can come up and stay in the middle.”

Oyedepo To Buhari, Resign, Get Out Of Office

Jesusegun Alagbe

The founder and presiding bishop of the Living Faith Church Worldwide, aka Winners’ Chapel, David Oyedepo, has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to resign over persistent Fulani militant herdsmen killings.

In a YouTube video posted by the church’s official page, the cleric made this call on Sunday at its headquarters in Ota, Ogun State.

With this development, Oyedepo has joined other notable clerics – including the Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church, Abuja, John Cardinal Onaiyekan; and a former Archbishop of the Catholic Church in Lagos, Cardinal Anthony Olubunmi Okogie – who have asked Buhari to quit his position over failure to secure the lives of Nigerians.

The cleric told his congregation that although he was not partisan, he would not be alive and not talk about the massacre of Nigerians, especially in the Middle Belt, by suspected Fulani herdsmen.

Speaking on the theme, “Enough is enough,” he said, “When I was talking in 2015, people were saying my own was too much, now everybody can see what’s happening. What has moved forward in anybody’s life? You don’t know it’s war. Why are they attacking the Christian communities? Why has nobody been arrested? I can tell you this, the authorities and the powers that be are behind them.

“I will never be partisan; Jesus got me out of it in 1984. But I will not be alive to see innocent people massacred.

“We must wake up and push this evil back. Not one of those so-called herdsmen – they are jihadists – has been brought to book till date. Herdsmen don’t shoot; they have been here all along. They are just taking cover under the herdsmen to assault innocent citizens. They wake up in the night and slice innocent children to pieces. Yet, you have a government in place. What!

“The most honourable thing for any non-performing leader to do is to resign. The most honourable thing is to resign. That’s my own for Mr President. Resign! Get out of office! Even our Islamic friends in the North are calling on him (Buhari) to resign. Because that’s the noblest thing to do. Or are we going to look at one system destroy a whole nation?”

Oyedepo also warned Nigerians against the ceding of land to the Fulani herdsmen for ranching, as proposed by the Federal Government.

He said, “I’m going to say this and I’m not going to be tired. This (Nigeria) will never be a Fulani republic. That is not our terms of agreement. It will remain a secular nation till Jesus returns. It’s not just (about) land, it’s (about) heritage.

“Forever, I stand on the fact that no government has the authority to collect land from those who own it and transfer it to another person because on the other side (presumably the north), it never happens"

Punch