By Andrew Emelieze
Mr President must hear this. We the federal workers are writing you. We hope this letter meets you well. May be you have not been properly fed with the true pictures of the real situation in Nigeria. As federal government workers, we also serve as intermediary between government and the people. Mr President Sir, the situation at hand is really very bad, worrisome and disturbing. Nigerians are dying of hunger. The tough and hard policies you are making have brought untold hardship to the Nigerian people. Our people are now stranded everywhere, almost everybody is now a beggar.
The Nigerian daily existence is now a struggle for survival. It is as if our people have been ambushed since the removal of subsidy on petrol. It has been tales of lamentations everywhere and things have really fallen apart. It is so bad that many more citizens are contemplating suicide, just as suicide rate is more than ever before. This your hard and tough decisions have proven to be very harsh, hostile and rash. Sir, your policies/reforms are sentencing Nigerians to death; your policies are tantamount to capital punishment.
Our society is now stagnant; Naira our currency is badly devalued and prices of goods and services have gone out of the reach of the masses. The price of petrol has been increased more than fourteen times since you came to power. Our people are paying a very heavy price for your policies.
On our part as federal government workers, the story is not different; federal workers are also feeling the pains as a result of your tough policies. Federal workers are dying in silence. The price of petrol has gone up from ₦187 to ₦1,300 per litre and nothing reasonable is being done to assist the workers to combat the debilitating effects of your hard reforms. The ₦35,000 wage award/palliatives given to federal workers were stopped abruptly only after six months of undulating payments in the month of February. Five months wage award is still owed the federal workers. The new national minimum wage paid last September shows that only ₦40,000 is added to the salaries of all federal workers across all levels.
To us as federal workers, we see the consequential adjustments to the new national minimum wage as inconsequential. What has been down is the extending the earlier wage award of ₦35,000 upgraded to ₦40,000. To us as workers, we feel cheated. This is exploitation of the vulnerable. The federal government is not being fair to the workers. How can the price of petrol be increased by over 600% and just ₦40.000 is added to the salaries of workers? We the workers feel that we have been defrauded. We are just wondering the essence of the tripartite committee set up for months to review the new national minimum wage. More so that ₦70,000 is not a living wage and some states of the federation have promised to pay more than that.
Mr President Sir, we want to believe you are not aware that all the calculations for wage adjustment amount to ₦40,000 to all workers including that of our Directors. This to us is unlike the civil service calculus and bureaucracy. We the federal workers are badly demoralised and are not happy as our living conditions continue to deteriorate as we are daily faced with increasing cost of living crisis.
Sir, it is most unfortunate that despite the harsh economy, the federal government still owes the poorly paid workers that are already struggling for survival. Government is owing years of promotion arrears, backlog of duty tour allowances (DTA), eight months of 25/35% increments, five months of wage award, arrears of the new national minimum wage, earned allowances of federal tertiary institutions (FTI), hazard/uniform allowances of military and paramilitary officers and many more arrears owed the federal workers and the pensioners.
Mr President Sir, we are calling for your immediate attention. Federal Government workers are starving. Almost everyone is on loan to survive the day. Our take home hardly serves us for a week. We therefore urge you to personally intervene in the plight of the federal workers. We urge you to re-evaluate the so called new national minimum wage of ₦70,000. This to us is ridiculous and should be a national embarrassment and a disgrace. Federal Government workers have been financially embarrassed. We therefore reject ₦40,000 added to our monthly take home as the new national minimum wage. We urge the Federal Government to urgently fashion out radical moves to immediately tackle the rising cost of food stuffs and other goods and services.
It is also imperative for government to open up the borders and allow for imported food to flood our markets. We demand the payment of 30% of our monthly pay as cost of living allowance (COLA) to all federal workers pending the resolution of this economic crisis. We request that our pay slip states explicitly, the breakdown of our monthly salary/allowances and that salary payment should not be delayed again. We are also calling for the return of payment of leave bonus to all federal workers and the removal of tax on our allowances.
Mr President Sir, we are urgently waiting for your immediate response as the federal workers cannot cope again with the prevailing hardship. We have endured these pains enough. It is time for you to act and rescue the federal workers and the Nigerian people from this mass hunger. We are expecting positive response from you. If the contrary, we will not hesitate to fight for our survival. We believe actions can be taken and all our backlog of arrears cleared within the next fourteen days. Else, we shall be left with no other option other than to cry out.
Part of what we shall do is to pass a vote of no confidence on you if this hardship continues. We will also not hesitate to lead an unending protest against you if this suffering persists. We are citizens and not slaves. We urge you to end these sufferings, return subsidy on petroleum products and reverse the pump price of petrol. We are also calling for the immediate cessation of the deliberate devaluation of our national currency.
Mr President, hope is a great thing; so, we are hoping that in line with your promise of the renewed hope that you take this our humble appeal in good fate and act accordingly. Judicial officers across all levels have just been given a 300% pay rise. So, it won’t be out of place to do same for other federal workers instead of the meagre ₦40,000 added to all federal workers as the new national minimum wage.
*Comrade Emelieze is the National Coordinator of FWF, former Chairman of Oyo State TUC and former Member of National Executive Council (NEC) of TUC.