SPEECH BY HIS EXCELLENCY EBELE JONAHAN The politics of ‘I am a Christian’ or ‘I am from a minority tribe’ or any sentiment at all, will not work on our psyche anymore! The Jonathan administNigeria’s Season of Strikes and an Administration’s run of Lies Posted on October 4, 2013 by elvisharmony Image Nigeria is in a season of strike actions. Doctors are on strike, virtually all the trade unions in the universities are on strike, staff of CAC are on strike too, just as polytechnic trade unions are also set to embark on an indefinite strike. And the best this sick government can do is to politicise the situation. Jonathan’s government was built on a sandy foundation of sentiments and the president and his handlers think he can survive on it forever. The problem in these institutions and possibly all of the civil service is that every worker is being owed some arrears of one emolument or the other. These monies, like that of pensioners have been embezzled by those in primary custody of it, in connivance with the powers that appointed them. The culture is that a governor or president simply calls the head of a ministry or agency and tells them to raise an amount of money for him. Imagine that the president calls the Registrar General of CAC and tells him to raise 300 million for him. The poor man will have no option but to take it from any account of his agency that has such an amount, which could unfortunately be the salaries account. When the time for payment of salaries comes, the money won’t be available. They may then mop some other monies from some other places and manage to pay the salaries while withholding the allowances. This is what happens that results in workers being owed money by the government. And that is why the president or governor never questions how the workers get to be owed when monies were released for their benefits. Every head of an agency gives returns to his bosses, godfathers and legislative committees that have oversight functions over it, like the case of the former minister who shared unspent funds of his ministry and gave Iyabo part of it because she was the chairman of the senate committee in charge of his ministry. Every financial year, the government makes hundreds of billions of dollars. The money is spent, yet the government owes contractors, workers and records scores of uncompleted projects. Every agency cries of ‘paucity’ of funds, yet their heads buy chains of cars, build estates in cities across the world and live in provocative affluence. That is the irony. And what does the president, governor or legislature do? Nothing, because they were the first to take before the guys in charge did and so do not have the moral rights to hold them accountable. How could the ex-pensions boss have escaped if not with the connivance of the powers that be, after he stole such a ridiculous amount of money? He didn’t steal it alone and his ogas could not hold him because if he breaks the pod of scandals, he will spill fat beans of bewildering revelations that will consume the ogas too. Consider the poor quality of GSM services, why is the NCC, ministry of communications and the legislature not able to enforce standards within the industry? With the hundreds of billions the GSM companies post as profit every year, they can afford to settle all the ogas in billions such that no one questions them even if they take guns to the streets to rob Nigerians. Instead of the presidency to address the issues leading to the strike actions, they are calling the demand by workers for the benefits of their sweat and blood to be paid to them as politics and some ignorant and gullible people are listening to him. The politics of ‘I am a Christian’ or ‘I am from a minority tribe’ or any sentiment at all, will not work on our psyche anymore! The Jonathan administration should stop deceiving Nigerians and playing sentiments with people’s livelihoods that they have suffered to earn and dully deserve to be paid. Are these people being owed or not? What happened to their monies? These are the questions the administration should answer before the trash about the strikes being politically motivated. POWERED BY Fanenfabian.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Oct 2013 09:03:58 +0000
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