The Governor of Kaduna State,
Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, has been commended for being the first Nigerian State
Governor to implement the N30, 000 Federal minimum wage.
The commendation was made by a former
National Publicity Secretary of the defunct New Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP)
and a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Eze Chukwuemeka
Eze.
Eze also described Governor
El-Rufai’s action as not just historic particularly now that report had it that
about 95 Per Cent Of States can’t Pay the N30,000 Minimum Wage, but one that
has placed him on a whole new higher pedestal in Nigeria’s governance chart.
Eze challenged other State
Governors across the country to borrow a leaf from the welfarist approach of
the Kaduna State Governor by understudying how El-Rufai managed to implement
this in a State that is not an Oil producing State.
He also charged the labour and
trade unions in Kaduna to mobilise the state’s work-force to support the
Governor in his quest to transform their State and to make it leading light of
development governance in Nigeria.
The party chieftain, who
described the Governor as “a man of the people and lover of the welfare of his
people”, also said he was overwhelmed by his bold approach to leadership and
tasked him to reason with his other 35 colleague-state governors to organise a
seminar, which will address how he has managed to achieve this feat and learn
how to replicate same implementation across the other states of the federation.
“I must confess that I am
motivated and encouraged by Governor El-Rufai’s boldness and urge him, for the
benefit, development and emancipation of our people, to organise a seminar on
behalf of the remaining 35 state governors of the federation, which if approved
I, Eze, am ready to contribute to enable the ‘Peoples’ Governor’ to lecture
them on the possible implementation of this policy, even while most of them are
owing several months of salaries to their civil servants under the 18,000
minimum salary scale.
“I learnt that this was possible
following the approval by the State Executive Council sometime in August. I
therefore rejoice with the employees of Kaduna state government who have begun
receiving salary alerts for the month of September already, thereby making the
state the first to begin implementation in the country”, he said.
Quoting a beneficiary-civil
servant of Kaduna state by the name Zubairu Bello, a Grade Level 10 officer,
Eze depicted the delight now being expressed by employees of the state
government. According to him, Bello said he received the alert of N65,500,
representing a N25,500 increase from the N40,000 he receives monthly as salary.
“I am so happy with this
development, because now I can comfortably feed my family, pay school fees and
make some savings. I want to thank El-Rufa’i for the gesture. This is a proof
of his administration’s commitment on putting people first”, Bello had said.
In the same vein, the party
chieftain joined former Vice President Namadi Sambo to commend El-Rufai for
completing the Zaria water expansion project, which has not been upgraded for
42 years, saying “this is another great feat and an important milestone, which
will go a long way to address the perennial potable water shortage in the
ancient city and improved social and economic life of the people.”
He, however, expressed his
intention to visit Kaduna State in the nearest future to study more about the
300 bed specialist hospital under construction, Governor El-Rufai’s industrial
and development plans blueprint, with the hope of selling such blueprints to
Governor Wike of Rivers State, “who not only have more revenue accruing to his
state, but without anything to show for it.
“Certainly Governor El-Rufai has
shown that improving the lives of his people matters the most to him and I will
like to assure him of my unflinching and unalloyed support in any way possible
in his noble objective in improving and uplifting the economic status of his
state”, Eze said.
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