The chairman of the Ebonyi State Council of Elders, Benjamin Okah, has advocated for an immediate increment in workers’ salaries to cushion the effect of subsidy removal by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Okah, a former Commissioner for Public Utility in Ebonyi State, made this known at the weekend while speaking with newsmen, some hours after the inauguration of 21 Senior Special Assistants (SSA) and Special Assistants (SA) by Governor Francis Nwifuru in Abakaliki, the capital of Ebonyi State.
He applauded President Tinubu for taking the bold step to remove fuel subsidy, which, according to him, made a few individuals erroneously rich, leaving a great number of Nigerians to suffer in abject poverty.
On fuel subsidy, he said: “It is a scam, very fraudulent, and of no use because, at the end of the day, Nigerians have very low incomes. They are not able to make purchases; our purchasing rate is very poor. And therefore, businesses are going down so much. It has actually created a lot of poverty for the majority and wealth for the very few. I’m very glad that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took the bull by the horn and removed the subsidy.”
Okah further called on Governor Francis Nwifuru to govern the state very well 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 and governance, which should reinvigorate and re-empower the institutions to function. If every institution is functioning, then governance has become very simple,” he said.
