Catholic Bishop of Awka Diocese, Most Reverend Paulinus Ezeokafor, has urged President Bola Tinubu to reduce the cost of governance to enable better wages for workers. Speaking to journalists in Awka on Tuesday, the bishop criticized the N62,000 minimum wage proposed by the Federal Government as insufficient given the high cost of living in the country today. He argued that even N100,000 would not adequately meet the basic needs of Nigerian workers.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt is unfortunate to hear about the minimum wage debates. To me, N100,000 is even not enough, looking at how some persons siphon monies meant for every Nigerian,\u201d Bishop Ezeokafor stated. \u201cIt is a question of living in a very big blessed country and at the same time the workers and masses are suffering because some individuals are taking home what belongs to society, leaving the workers and the general public to be gnashing their teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Addressing the N62,000 proposal, he continued, \u201cFrom it, someone will take care of his health, transportation, accommodation, feeding and everything about life per month and one month is 30 days on the average. Will that person ever be able to have a roof over his head? And yet they see it as too much to be paid to the people. I do not believe that we are telling ourselves the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The bishop emphasized that the government can sustain higher wages by cutting the high salaries and benefits of National Assembly members, governors, and federal officials. \u201cIf they are looking for where to source the money from, they should slash the National Assembly Members\u2019 jumbo salaries, the governors\u2019 and the Federal Government\u2019s salaries and emoluments itself. Cut down the cost of governance. Use the money to settle workers and poor Nigerians.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Bishop Ezeokafor warned of potential social unrest if workers’ welfare is not adequately addressed. \u201cSee how the Burkina Faso President is managing the economy of the country. The President of Uruguay, see how he is managing their economy. What extra job are they doing to warrant such jumbo salaries? Labour should tell them that they can pay the money. Let them cut down the cost of running the government.\u201d<\/p>\n
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He concluded with a stark warning: \u201cYou see somebody debating paying N62,000 while they are going home with N30 million monthly. If government is sincere they should reduce the money they are sharing to themselves. If not, there could be a revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Catholic Bishop of Awka Diocese, Most Reverend Paulinus Ezeokafor, has urged President Bola Tinubu to reduce the cost of governance to enable better wages for workers. Speaking to journalists in Awka on Tuesday, the bishop criticized the N62,000 minimum wage proposed by the Federal Government as insufficient given the high cost of living in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":35369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35370,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35368\/revisions\/35370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}