Tinubu’s N5bn Palliative Per State Laughable, Not For Even A Local Govt — NLC

THE Nigeria Labour Con­gress (NLC) on Thursday, wrote off the N5 billion allocations to each state in the federation as palliative, claiming the funds would not even be enough to go round a single local government council.

President of the NLC, Joe Ajaero, who decried the palliative scheme meant to cushion the impact of the removal of fuel subsidy, de­scribed Nigeria as a country where the leaders exhibit the highest form of wickedness against her citizens.

Obviously pained by the policy, he said the removal of fuel subsidies was akin to wagging a war against the poor.

Ajaero spoke at the NLC national symposium tagged, ‘Nigeria Economy and the Crisis of Survival: Robbing the Poor to Pay the Rich’.

He went on to accuse the Federal Government of en­riching state governors at the expense of the poor masses, as the distribution of the pal­liatives would be skewed in favour of the ruling class.

He alleged that governors were in the habit of convert­ing whatever was meant for the poor masses and workers for their personal use and benefit.

“The palliatives which the Federal Government was giv­ing to a whole state is barely enough to adequately cater for just one local government area in a state,” he claimed.

Making further remarks at the event, he said, “What is happening in the country today is clearly a class war between us the dispossessed and those that have.

“They want to continue to have, whether it is the issue of subsidy or whatever. So it is clearly a war against the poor. I have not seen such wickedness against the poor anywhere as seen in Nigeria today.

“The announcement we got about the N5 billion allocation to the states is so annoying. You allocate N5 billion to states and five trucks of rice. If you share five trucks of rice to a local government area they will not get one, one cup.

“If we accept the position of the Bureau of Statistics that we have 133 million Ni­gerians that are multi-dimen­sionally poor before the sub­sidy removal. After the subsidy removal, the number must have increased or dou­bled. If you multiply 5 billion by 36 states and Abuja, you will get about 185 billion. If you divide it by 133 million that are multidimensionally poor, each person will not get up to N1,500. Is that the palliative?

“You will take the palliative and give it to the governors. It is obvious that anything you call palliative and give to the governors is not for workers. We all remembered how former President Buhari gave them money to offset salaries of workers but they refused to use the money to better the life of Nigerian citizens under their governance.”

The NLC president also lamented that unfavourable policies of the government were widening the gap between the poor and rich in Nigeria as the middle class has been totally eroded.

“People can’t go to work again, there is nothing on ground for them to work on. This lamentation has continued to go on and on, and Nigerian workers are at the receiving end.

“What the bourgeoisie is getting is not reducing. They are getting subsidies daily, some of them that are importing goods, they are giving them import waivers. Their allowances are increasing but that of Ni­gerian workers are decreas­ing by the day.

“Poverty situation is wors­ening, the level of unemploy­ment is unimaginable and the same with the level of under­employment. There is hardly any Nigerian that is properly remunerated going by what is happening in the country.

“The worst is that there is no social safety net. No transportation system, no housing, even if a worker saves for 35 years, the money cannot afford a house. Our pension deductions we can­not say much about it. Now what is it that the government is actually doing for the citizens? Where is the welfarist service component of the state to its citizens?

“This is a call that this lamentation is more and the gap between the poor and the rich is getting wide by the day. The middle class has disappeared and there is no conscious effort to redeem the situation.”

Speaking further, Ajaero raised concerns that the government has once again begun to treat workers’ welfare with levity and was treating it with its normal lackadai­sical attitude by failing to honour promises of acting on concerns raised by the union for the benefit of not just pub­lic servants, but Nigerians in general.

Eighteen-Eleven Media