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This is, perhaps, the most touchy issue at the moment in the state and it appears to overshadow the many achievements this government has recorded in less than two years.
This is not surprising though. Salaries are sensitive. Peoples’ lives depend on them.
A worker is entitled to his wages. Salaries are not gifts, they are entitlements of a worker. It is not a favor by the government. Governments have an obligation to pay salaries to her workers. This point must be made.
A situation where salaries are owed for months is unusual.
For me personally, it is painful. Coming from a background where salary payment is taken for granted, it’s a challenging transition for me. I am not a politician, at least, not yet. So I do not believe that anyone should play politics with workers’ salaries.
For Governor Okezie Ikpeazu, it is even more painful. In my interactions with him both before this time and now, I see deep pain in his eyes each time he addresses this issue. As someone who spent a greater part of his adult life working as a teacher and living on his salaries, the salary situation makes him very sad. This I can tell you.
Of course, being a political environment, political enemies of the government and established fifth columnists have found the issue very interesting. It has become a potent arsenal for them to shoot relentlessly at a government that they never wanted and have done everything to embarrass. This is understandable.
Let me state this very clearly that no one is sitting on the salaries of workers in Abia State. No one is REFUSING to pay salaries. The situation is not one where the money is stacked somewhere and someone is simply refusing to pay.
I know it’s difficult trying to explain this kind of situation. I know it’s hard for someone who is owed to even understand what you are saying.
But we must explain. This is the burden of government. My position has been and will continue to be that governments are established primarily for the benefit of the people. Governments must be accountable to the people and at all times, governments must communicate with the people. While we celebrate the achievements of this government which are many, we must admit our challenges and try to explain why these challenges exist.
This is what a responsible government does.
As Special Adviser to the Governor on Public Communications, my job is clear. To communicate with the people, not just on the good sides but to be bold enough to talk about the downsides. This is a responsibility I owe the Governor and the people of Abia State. It is a job I simply have to do.
So what are the issues here?
Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu became Governor at a very peculiar time in our history as a state. The state of social and economic infrastructure were appalling. There were no roads anywhere. In Aba, the main commercial Centre of the state, not one single road was good. Federal and state roads were in an unbelievable state of disrepair. Of course there were piles of salary arrears. The morale of the people were at an all time low.
However, at the time he took over, federal allocations were still stable and Dr. Ikpeazu went to work immediately. There was no time to waste. On his very first working day in office, he was on the streets of Aba flagging off road construction.
Salaries were regular within the first six months in office. Save for the inherited arrears, this government paid salaries regularly then.
Then the country entered recession and revenues fell badly.
Let me say at this point that since it’s creation, Abia State has survived mainly on federal allocations. There has not really been any concerted effort to focus attention on internally generated revenues and because the cash flow from Abuja was good, we carried on as if all was well. Please note too that this is not peculiar to Abia. Most states in Nigeria depend on Abuja for survival. This is a fallout of the strange FEEDING BOTTLE FEDERALISM we practice in Nigeria where every month, states go to Abuja and queue up for federal alllocations. Over these years, only Lagos State took deliberate steps to work on their internal revenue. Anambra State has also, in the last administration started the process. The rest of the states, including Abia depend on Abuja for survival. This is the truth.
While we enjoyed the cash from Abuja every month, we neglected our internal sources of revenue. Aba was neglected. The commercial and economic potentials of the town were forgotten. Since the late 1980s, Aba was forgotten. Why not? The cash from Abuja was flowing. So why bother? But that’s the easy part. The bubble was going to burst soon and it did burst.
Oil revenues plummeted. Global oil prices crashed and the Nigerian economy was in trouble. Allocations to states dipped dangerously. In Abia, it went down at a point to 1.6 Billion Naira. Meanwhile, the monthly salary bill for the state then stood at 2.4 Billion Naira. Meanwhile, little or nothing was coming from internal sources which had long been neglected. It was a clear conundrum.
The options facing the government were few and very tight.
First, all the income available to the Government in one month is not enough to pay salaries for that month.
Secondly and this point must be made, governments are not elected to pay salaries alone. This is a clear fact. In addition to the payment of salaries, governments perform other roles. They build roads, maintain security and other social and economic architecture of state.
It was a little easier for some other states because they didn’t have to grapple with decayed infrastructure. Over the years, these other states invested heavily in the development of roads and critical facilities. It was different here.
If the Ikpeazu administration had committed all the resources available to it into salary payment to the complete detriment of other issues like road, only God knows what Aba and other towns would have looked like by now.
The same fifth columnists would have practically torn the government to shreds for abandoning roads and allowing the people to suffer. They would have asked the Governor why he chose to pay only workers who constitute about 9% of the population of the state and abandoned the other 91%.
In the last one and half years, banks and other companies have embarked on staff rationalization and outright dismissal of workers. This is a clear evidence that all is not well with our economy.
Is this an option open to the Abia State Government? To sack workers? Of course not. The Governor is not that kind of leader.
Will the government borrow at 22% interest rate every month to pay salaries? That is also not an option. It’s like cutting of your head and buying a cap.
So there are clear options left to us as a government and as a people.
First, we must make the best out of a bad situation. The available resources must be apportioned in such a way as to allow every sector get a chunk, no matter how small. This is exactly what the government is doing. This is why in the MDAs, that is the core civil service, salaries have been paid up to November with the last disbursement of the Paris Club refunds. Other parastatals are owed higher.
We must look inwards to find ways of improving our internal revenue. Again, the government is doing exactly that and the results are very encouraging. For the first time in our history as a state, monthly internal revenue hit the One Billion Naira mark in December 2016. The Governor has set a target of 2.5 Billion. His won’t happen overnight. But the journey has started. Revenue holes are being plugged.
We must find a way to sustain the ongoing renewal of infrastructure. We cannot stop. That is the only way to help our economy. The investments in roads just has to continue. We are mostly business people and we must provide the enabling environment for businesses and commerce to thrive which is the only way our economy will grow. Again, this won’t happen overnight. But we have started.
We must do a thorough clean up of our institutions and eliminate the syndrome of ghost workers which has remained a huge drain on scarce resources. Wage bill for teachers still hovers at around 700 Million Naira Monthly, a figure which is highly suspicious and unsustainable. Indeed, latest findings show that while we have more primary schools in Aba than Ohafia, Ohafia gulps more funds in teachers salaries than Aba. How is that possible? Investigations are on to unravel this. Meanwhile, latest measure now is to pay teachers using crossed cheques. We must fight this malaise head on.
Revenue yielding agencies must be accountable and transparent in funds management. A situation where these agencies generate money and not pay anything into government coffers and yet cannot pay their own salaries but depend on government to pay them is crazy and unacceptable. This has been the practice over several years. It simply cannot continue. Government is doing something about it.
Governor Ikpeazu is committed to the improvement in the welfare of our workers but the Augean Stable must be cleaned.
Things will surely improve this year. They have to improve.
In the interim, I sympathize sincerely with our workers. It’s a very difficult situation. We all are involved. We have relations and friends and colleagues who are affected. We feel these pains and share in them too. You cannot see the children of your relatives who can’t go to school because of this situation and look the other way. We are all victims of this unfortunate situation.
God willing, things will get better this year.
Onyebuchi EMEMANKA
Special Adviser to the Governor on Public Communications.
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