Today, with crazy bills from electricity companies, erratic fuel increases, school fees and exorbitant health-care charges, the take-home pay of N18, 000 can no longer take the worker to the bus stop. If the States must survive, we expect the Governors’ Forum not to continue to exist only in lamentation.
By Hon. Josef Omorotionmwan
For too long, Nigeria placed all its reliance on revenue from oil. But so soon, we have reached a point where oil is now receiving a bashing from every direction – the price is plummeting; the vandals are stealing a good part of the oil we produce; and the little that is left by the oil thieves, no one wants to buy. Triple tragedy!
This has placed the governors between the rock and the hard place; and in the process, they are confused, to the extent that they are now seeking to break the law. They claim they can no longer pay the minimum wage of N18, 000.
The governors are playing smart, unknown to them perhaps that it is not always smart to be smart. We wonder why the governors are picking on the workers.
The truth is that the financial situation of most States is so precarious that very soon, the governors may not even be able to pay themselves.
Of all the emoluments in the public service, the minimum wage is the only one backed by an Act of Parliament – the National Minimum Wage Act, 2011.
The pay of the President and the Governors as well as the stupendous haulage by members of the National Assembly is merely a determination of the Revenue Mobilization and Fiscal Commission, not backed by any law.
When the governors argue that the National Minimum Wage Act was promulgated when the price of crude was $126 per barrel, which has now fallen to $41 per barrel, they portray their total ignorance of the legislative process.
No one prevented them from approaching the National Assembly when the Bill was being passed, to insert a short clause to predicate the minimum wage on the fluctuation in the price of oil.
That would also have meant that when the price of oil hit $175 per barrel, the minimum wage would also have been commensurately reviewed upwards.
By now, all that anyone who is fairly acquainted with the legislative process can do is to seek to amend the law, not to break it.
Apparently, our Governors have lost the sense of history. Otherwise, they should have realized that this is not the first time that the price of crude oil has fallen.
Our governors should have realized that the volatility of the international oil market is beyond the control of anyone and they should have taken steps to ensure that they would not catch cold whenever the oil market sneezed.
Again, the office of a State governor is not a tea party. In the Sociology of the Family, we know of the concept of the good mother and the bad father and this is the combination that produces the perfect family.
Evidently, tax is the main source of revenue for all tiers of government. Tax laws in Nigeria are federal laws. After the 1914 amalgamation, Lord Lugard introduced what can be called the universal tax system and the Native Revenue Ordinance was passed in 1918.
The Ordinance was first applied in Abeokuta in the present Ogun State and Benin City in the present Edo State from where it extended to the defunct Eastern Region in 1923.
The Ordinance and other associated regulations were modified and incorporated into the Direct Taxation Ordinance of 1943, which eventually formed the basis for modern taxation in Nigeria.
We have gone at this great length to show that tax laws have always been federal laws and a State government can only take the part it seeks to implement and get its House of Assembly to domesticate it.
Most State governors choose the path of least resistance. Governors that seek to implement tax laws remain in the bad books of the citizenry because nobody wants to pay tax.
Instead, most governors want to attain the impossible status of the good father and the good mother for the purpose of winning elections.
This is another way of having their cake and eating it; but it is certainly not the way that leads to development.
See where this has now landed them? We commend the Tinubus, the Oshiomholes, the Fashiolas and the Ambodes of this world – the men who saw tomorrow yesterday and who knew that someday, the oil-wells would dry up!
Even at the edge of doom and risk to their lives, they fought relentlessly to implement the tax regime and their States are now better for it.
In the particular case of Edo State, the workers should be proud that by the proactive stance of their leadership they have now been saved all the embarrassment associated with the minimum wage imbroglio.
This is where we call on all those fighting against the Land Use Charge to seethe their swords and embrace the tax, because the era of sharing the cake is over. For all those who want the cake, it is time to join in the baking.
For how long will the governors keep running cap-in-hand to Abuja, asking for bail-out when, indeed, there is nothing like bail-out?
That Federation Account belongs to all the tiers of government. The ugly situation bequeathed to us by the military whereby the Federal Government simply sits on 52% of the total revenue, thus having so much to steal and throw about; while the States and Localities that really need the money by virtue of being nearer the people are left in penury is unacceptable.
We commend the Nigerian workers whose attitude has been one of allowing the sleeping dog lie, provided the dog is not sleeping on the master’s bed.
Today, with crazy bills from electricity companies, erratic fuel increases, school fees and exorbitant health-care charges, the take-home pay of N18,000 can no longer take the worker to the bus stop.
If the States must survive, we expect the Governors’ Forum not to continue to exist only in lamentation.
The peer review mechanism must be deepened so that the front-runners can teach their colleagues how to look inwards and work harder. After all, there is no royal road to geometry.
Hon. Josef Omorotionmwan is a public affairs analyst and Chairman, Board of Directors, Edo Broadcasting Service. He can be reached at: joligien@yahoo.com
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