The General Secretary of Textile Workers Union,Comrade Issa Aremu has called for more sacrifices from President Muhammadu Buhari beyond a symbolic 50% cut in salary.
Aremu who is the deputy president,Ajaero-led faction of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Chairperson, IndustriALL Global Union, Sub Sahara Africa Region made this remark during the 10th anniversary of Amilcar Cabral Ideological School (ACIS) on Wednesday in Lagos.
He said “We commend President Muhammed Buhari for the sensitivity in reducing his pay by 50 percent. However there is the need for sacrifices beyond this presidential symbolic pay cut. One it is debatable if the President who pays for nothing from toothpick to president jets needs millions of Naira as salaries.
Aremu said further that “The best way to Honour Cabral is to call on African leaders to selflessly serve their peoples. And there is no where with self-serving leaders like Nigeria.
He also slammed Nigeria’s lawmakers for their prohibitive allowances.”The 8th National Assembly was inaugurated on June 9 by both the Senate and the House of Representatives. So far they have only sat for four days in the last five weeks. Meanwhile they have collected all the prohibitive allowances that shamelessly include wardrobe allowances for work not done in a country in which many workers are not paid for months for work done. It will take a minimum wage earner about 2 years and five months to earn what legislators earn as wardrobe allowance of N506,600,”he said.
He also urged Nigerians to “get prepared to occupy the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) to urgently Review the compensation structure which unduly privilege the ruling elite at the expense of the working people. The critical issue is bridging the widening wage gap in the country. We must also stop multiple remunerations for few ruling elite while one legitimate pay is denied the workers. Most former governors who are now senators are still unacceptably collecting prohibitive pensions while still drawing on state purse collecting salaries and allowances as serving senators.
“Governorships should not be pensionable but seen as selfless service to the nation with severance pay and Honour that must go with good governance. Furthermore if we can tax minimum wage, while not tax the maximum pay of the President, Vice President and the governors alike.
He commended the “Cabral Ideological School, (ACIS) on the occasion of its 10th Anniversary. President Barack Obama of United States made a historic visit to Ghana in July 2009, where while addressing the Ghanaian parliament he made his famous remark that; Africa needs strong institutions, not strong men! Obama’s remark came three years after ACIS was formed. ACIS was formed on July 16, 2005 ably led by strong men like Comrades Abiola Dabiri (Central Coordinator) and Comrade Abiodun Aremu (Co-Coordinator). ACIS has shown that contrary to Obama’s admonition Africa indeed already has both strong men (and women) and strong institutions.
Aremu recalled that Cabral was born on 12 September 1924 in Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, to Cape Verdean parents. He was assassinated in 1973 by colonial Portuguese agent during the struggle for independence of Guinea Bissau. Living for 49 years, Cabral’s lives and times show that it’s not how long but how well. He was a student activist. He was a nationalist and pan Africanist. From 1963 to his assassination in 1973, Cabral led the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, PAIGC’s guerrilla movement (in Portuguese Guinea) against the Portuguese government, which evolved into one of the most successful wars of independence in modern African history. The goal of the conflict was to attain independence for both Portuguese Guinea and Cape Verde. At a time it was unpopular to return to Africa after his studies in agronomy in Portugal he returned to Africa in the 1950s, promoting the independence causes of the then Portuguese colonies.
Cabral,he said belongs to the generation of selfless African leaders who gave all to the continent. Africa is in need of great pan Africanist leaders like Cabral and Nkrumah willing to work and die for the continent.
Cabral and the PAIGC set up a trade-and-barter bazaar system that moved around the country and made staple goods available to the countryside at prices lower than that of colonial store owners. During the war of independence Cabral set up a roving hospital and triage station to give medical care to wounded PAIGC’s soldiers and quality-of-life care to the larger populace, relying on medical supplies garnered from the USSR and Sweden. The bazaars and triage stations were at first stationary until they came under frequent attack from Portuguese regime forces.
