COVID-19: Cut in Delta minimum wage saves us N700m monthly —Aniagwu

Delta State Commissioner for Information, Mr Charles Aniagwu, speaks with ALPHONSUS AGBORH on the bloated civil service, peace and development of the creeks, anti-development bill and intervention on federal roads in the state, among others. Excerpts.

 

With the terrible effects of COVID-19 on the economy, how  is Delta State coping?

COVID -19 has tremendous effects on the economy. I recalled the last time the National Bureau of Statistics gave indication of what is happening to the Nigeria’s economy which gives it about 65 per cent and you know Delta is not exempted from the economy. It is really alarming to know the number of persons who have lost their jobs in the private sector and struggling to keep soul and body together. A number of states have implemented a downward review of salaries. Beyond that, we in Delta also effected 30 per cent downward review of the 2020 budget, which amounted to about N113 billion. That is even bigger than the budget of Ekiti State. So it means that all the projects that would have been handled with that amount can no longer be handled and so its effect is quite enormous.

So you can understand why that is the case because a  number of the economy has been shut ,in some instances up to two months and other instances more than a month  and up till now, we don’t still have full re-opening of the entire economy.

Business places like night clubs and others (whether we like it or not), contribute to the growth of the economy of the state. We have just opened cinemas, hotels  and others.

There are people who work in these places; they earn money and also pay tax. So when they don’t earn money and don’t pay tax, that will also be a reduction in the revenue of the state and so COVID-19 has enormous effect on the economy of the state.

 

Is there a possibility of the state refunding deducted money from workers’  salaries? 

No. Sacrifice does not mean remove it today and tomorrow we bring it back. Where are we going to bring it back from? Don’t forget that there are many states in the country that have not even embraced the new minimum wage and so our reduction in revenue affects the new minimum wage. We are not gaining anything, because number one, the money is not there. It is not as if we  are saving it.

The only thing is that cut in minimum wage   reduced the burden on the state by about N700 million or more. That amount was taken off the shoulders of government. With the cases of political appointees, whose salaries were review downwards as well, it means that the burden of the state was lessen by over N800m monthly and we had to do that because we also have other obligations to contractual agreements, servicing of existing obligations to either commercial banks or other rescheduled ones that we have and some deductions made at the federal level and for us to also meet up with our obligations to pensioners.

So we appreciate our workers for seeing reasons with the government on the need to effect that downward review and we give God the glory.

 

Did government reduce other incentives apart from the minimum wage?

No, we did not. People should go and look at their calculations; we didn’t dig  into the salaries; they know we did not except for the political appointees because  they were not part of the new minimum wage.

 

 

 If the pandemic continues is there a plan to downsize the workforce?

No. We are not praying that COVID-19 remains. This thing we take it once at a time; we don’t want to begin to talk about thing that we are not looking into. We hope we don’t get to that level.

The fact is that our workforce, even in spite of all the effort we have put in to downsize, is still a little bloated due to the fact that over the years government taught that the philosophy was just to employ even when there was no vacancy.

But in the last five years, we have centred more on entrepreneurship, creating jobs by making people to acquire skills and that is making them contribute to the GDP of the state and as well train some other hands beyond the ones trained by government by what you may call remote benefit, that’s those who have directly benefited from government empowerment programme.

The idea that if you want to create jobs, you just employ people into the civil service has been found not to be very productive because you should have a limit to the number of persons in your civil service.

So we are hoping that as we make progress with  retirements and  get people to fill certain gaps, we will gradually resize the civil service without having to embark on retrenchment.

 

Government has slowed down on its project execution. Why is that? 

You cannot go into a rotten mouth to look for healthy teeth. If the mouth is the rotten, rest assured the teeth will be affected. So if we say there is a denture and the economy is heading towards recession as a result of COVID-19, we cannot be operating as if we are not part of the economy. So if we have an economy which is struggling on account of the COVID-19, we would not expect that everything would still move with the same speed. What we can do is to devise a means of getting the economy to be able to run and not be bugged down totally by the COVID-19.

 

Why is your government facing criticisms from the opposition and even workers in recent times?

Let me tell you that if you take a look at the national politics, our state is among the least being criticised because everybody knows what Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa administration is doing.  The governor is a democrat and he realises that one of the pillars of democracy is the ability of the individuals to express themselves. That freely given gift from God is further enhanced by the democratic principles, in which case even if individuals disagree  and based on their views and the desire to say things that are at variance with the way they think, you don’t kill them. The only thing you can do is to further explain to them that what they are saying is not the way it is and we provide them more information. That is our responsibility to further inform them and let them realise that what may have fuelled their criticism is not the way it is.

At the moment Senator Ifeanyi Okowa has committed to taking Delta far beyond where he met it and that is why we are pursuing strongly the stronger Delta Agenda and so if anybody is criticising, there are those who are politically motivated.

 

Youths have been threatening to shutdown oil installations in the state because much is  taken away from the state and nothing is coming back from oil companies and federal government.

You recall that after the 2016 hostility in the oil bearing communities which led to the shutting down of the 48 inch trans Forcado export line, we took a lot of steps to appease our people because that particular action then was triggered by certain actions and comments from the special authorities which our people do  not consider quite appropriate, particularly with the then proposed closure of the Maritime University in Okerekoko. But with the support of the federal government, we also recall the vice-president came then to support and  give us a boost, that was how we were able to calm frayed  nerves.

Then having done that we now intensify the development of  the creeks which led to the building of a number of roads, schools and other facilities to add value to our brothers and sisters in the creeks.

That also proved wrong   the lie to the fact that the creek is not a place one can develop because we were able to do that since then we have enjoyed relative peace from our people in the creeks, which is why at every opportunity, we appreciate our youths and traditional rulers, particularly those in oil bearing communities in assisting us to let our people know that there was need to maintain the peace.

So if anybody is also agitating with a view of attracting government attention to certain demands, we would not hesitate to also pay attention to those demands. Those we can address and those we need to explain, we explain to them.

We would continue to urge our people to please maintain the peace because it is in our own interest that the peace is maintained.

 

Two years ago, Governor Okowa assented to a  legislation outlawing what we used to call “deve.” Is the law still in force?

We are making it very clear that, that law is still in force, because we are getting reports that some persons are still harassing some individuals. If anybody harasses you, because you want to develop your plot of land, or your property, you are at liberty to notify the law enforcement agencies to prosecute such person.

Nobody says because that law has been signed, one should take the law into his hands to fight anybody who wants to harass you. Take advantage of that law to invite the law enforcement agencies whose duty it is to prosecute such persons.

We are also seizing this opportunity to warn those who think that they can harass big investors, being it local or foreign, that we will not hesitate to take advantage of that law to prosecute anybody found wanting in this regard.

This is because we have observed before coming up with that law that the “deve” mentality impinges on development in a number of areas and that those who wanted to develop their plots of land or bring some other investments, were disturbed by this practice and that’s why we outlawed it so that we can speed up the process of development of our state.

We are convinced that if the state develops as fast as we desire it to, these individuals who think that deve is the only true way they can survive, will even get employment gainfully and have more legitimate job to do than attacking people and asking for deve levy.

 

 

The Federal Government’s response to the repairs of its roads in the state?

That is the major challenge. We also do know the Federal Government is seriously challenged with the issue of lack of funds. So, you can’t rule that out as a factor militating against the desire of the Federal Government as it was to repair a number of the federal roads.

As a state, we have intervened severally and I do know that some journalists have accompanied us to most of these roads particularly the Warri-Sapele  — Benin road, and then the Agbor-Eku –Amukpe roads, then of course the Ughelli –Asaba road which we are also working now and dualising to make sure it’s completed.

The same like  Asaba-Illah –Abuja or whether Onicha-ugbo to Ubiaja or Agbor from Uromi junction to Uromi, all those are federal roads and are actually in a very bad shape, we have tried as much as possible to intervene.

Don’t forget we also have our responsibility but the roads construction by the state and some of the one done by interventionist agencies like the NDDC, we do have a responsibility to maintain them, so we are pleading with the Federal Government.

 

 Trying to woo the companies that left to come back?

Yes, we have been on that and we are beginning to see some green light at the end of the day, all they want to know or see is whether the peace is sustain.  You can see since 2016 up till now, that there has been a form of relative calm in all our oil bearing communities and once you can guarantee the life of the investor is safe, it is one of the reasons why we went ahead to promulgate the anti-development law so that even if anybody wants to bring development to our shores, nobody or community will now begin to make it difficult or unattractive for the person to do so because the more people come to develop, the more funds will be attracted.

So, if it is not from state in our own case it can be national direct investment rather than local investment because all the money here is already here with us. So, we want other people from other states to come and invest on account of the very peaceful atmosphere that exists in our state today.

 

Okowa’s landmark project

It is not just one, there are numbers of landmark projects. We have seen the secretariat, the number of roads that we are also putting in place and so those are what we need. There are a lot of them, markets, stadium and the major one which is job creation.

 

 

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