The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) has demanded the sack of Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi on the basis of his “contemptible” recommendation to the Federal Government on the sack of 50 per cent of Nigerian workers.
Speaking on Tuesday at a retreat of the Capital Market Committee in Delta State, Sanusi had described as “irresponsible” government’s spending of the chunk of its revenue on payment of workers’ salaries.
“The revenue of government is supposed to be for the 160 million Nigerians. Any economy that uses 70 per of its money for civil servant and 30 per cent for others is unjustifiable,” he said.
“Today that 70 per cent of the revenue of the government goes to salaries and running other government expenses. How can you develop economy when for every one naira you make 70kobo is consumed by civil servants? You need to fire civil servants. Any society where government spends 70 per cent on its employees, leaving 30 per cent for development, has a problem.”
But reacting through a statement on Wednesday signed by its president, Comrade Abdulwaheed Omar, NLC said it is Sanusi who should be sacked instead, as workers are the drivers of revenue generation for the country. It maintained that sacking workers would not solve the country’s problems, as corruption and government ineptitude are the real impediments to the country’s progress.
The release, in full, reads:
“We were not shocked to hear the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi once again display his contempt for the working people in Nigeria with his recommendation that the Federal Government should sack 50 per cent of its workforce for the economy to be revived.
“It has become obvious that there are some individuals parading the corridors of power who are not qualified to be anywhere around organisations saddled with the responsibility of developing policies for national development. Since assumption of office as the governor of CBN, all Sanusi’s major pronouncements have been either directly anti-people or ruinous to the Nigerian economy.
“The burden of wealth creation in Nigeria, like any other country, has been on workers, while some politicians and economic parasites like Sanusi over-consume what the workers sweat to create. Workers are the key driving force of all economies and only a hollow economist like Sanusi will underplay this.
The major problems of the Nigerian economy are corruption and lack of good governance, and until we solve these problems our economy will continue in comatose.
“Today, there are countless probe reports with names of those who swindled our country of several trillions of both naira and other foreign currencies still living in Nigeria either walking freely around the corridors of power or directly holding public or political offices rather than being in jail.
“We see, in Sanusi, an agent of death that must be defeated and crushed before he further destroys the Nigerian economy.
“While President Jonathan is promising to create more jobs, Lamido Sanusi is calling for mass sack of civil servants in a country with one of the highest number of unemployed, which has indeed led to gross deprivation and the current state of insecurity in Nigeria.
“While we believe the Federal Government will ignore the ranting of this hollow economist, Sanusi has never demonstrated patriotism in all his advice on economic and financial management in Nigeria.
“Sanusi’s only understanding of governance is simply about saving money and not saving lives, as his proposals are repeatedly devoid of human content and without consideration for the implications on larger society. The burden that will come with mass sack as high as 50 per cent of civil servants in addition to the already-saturated unemployment market can better be imagined. Governance is about improving the quality of lives of the people and not destruction of productive lives.
“To show how unknowledgeable and unfit he is as a public office holder, Sanusi also called for the scrapping of local governments in Nigeria, a country that runs a federal system no matter how inefficient the system is. Local government is an important tier of government in a federal system and what we need is to strengthen the system to enable it deliver good governance to the people as it is the closest to the grassroots; and rather than removing the tier as proposed by Mallam Sanusi, the local governments require more funding to enable them function properly as required under a federal system.
“The truth, which Sanusi as a beneficiary is running away from, is that corruption has become a real burden on the economy and it should be the only priority item on the table of any serious government. Even if you sack all the workers in Nigeria, any amount saved from that will be stolen and the culprits will walk in freedom.
“And we need to ask Sanusi how much work he has successfully done in the CBN to reposition it to contemporary realities? He is surrounded with countless aides who are obviously not required by a man who believes that the Nigerian economy runs too high on overhead cost.
“It is obvious Sanusi was never qualified for the office of CBN governor in the first instance, and he must be asked to leave the office as he has shown more than enough incompetence and contempt for the Nigerian people.”
