Oil workers under the umbrella of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) yesterday expressed their position against the recent clamour by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) to increase the salaries and allowances of top public office holders.
The association frowned at the development, describing it as highly insensitive and an affront to the struggling masses and the working class.
Recall that in October, RMAFC chairman Mohammed Bello Shehu told Nigerians in a statement that the commission had concluded arrangements to review the remuneration of political office holders starting with the president.
The pay rise will also apply to the vice president, governors and their deputies, legislators and other political office holders.
Leadership gather that at present, the President get N14,058,820 per annum, the Vice President N12,126,290 while ministers, SGF, HoS and chairmen of constitutional bodies earn N7,801,640:00 per annum.
Ministers of state and members of constitutional bodies on the other hand get N7,536,683 with special advisers including speech writers warning N7,091,493 per annum.
But PENGASSAN president, Comrade Festus Osifo while speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the association’s special delegates conference held in Abuja yesterday insisted that only the downtrodden Nigeria workers deserve pay rise at the moment.
He said, “Today they are saying that they want to increase the emolument of political office holders, for us we felt that the people that deserve pay rise as of today is the downtrodden Nigeria workers because we felt that the political class have not justify the reasons why they were elected.
If you could remember that the multi dimensional poverty index that was released recently, the MPI said about 133 million Nigerians are in abject poverty. So the political class, all they should be thinking today is how do we bring millions of Nigerians out of poverty and not for them to start earning some jumbo pay because it has been shown that our National Assembly members are the highest paid anywhere in the world, so clearly for us, is it no, no, no”.
