Your Excellency,
Ahmad Bola Tinubu
President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces
Federal Republic of Nigeria
Aso Rock Villa
Abuja.
FOR THE ATTENTION OF
His Excellency, Distinguish Senator Godswill Akpabio
President of the Senate
Federal Republic of Nigeria
And
Right Honourable Tajuddeen Abbas
Federal House of Representatives
Your Excellency Sir,
With due respect, I wish I could have an opportunity to
discuss with you between our four eyes, the pressing issues of our dear country
whose stewardship Allah, in His infinite mercies, put in your hand.
Unfortunately, I do not know how to even start the Protocols of seeing a
President. Therefore, I resort to writing an open letter to you on Social Media
with the hope that sharing its content with many citizens may eventually end up
with somebody close to you or even Yourself Sir. I regret any inconveniences or
breaches of due protocols deserving a President that this write-up may cause.
Your Excellency Sir, the Organised Labour Unions - NLC/TUC -
have been pressing you to come up with a new living wage that could cater for
the “Basic Needs” of a common public servant in our dear country. They demanded
for increased minimum wage for Nigerian public servants and a reversal of the
recent electricity tariff hike. In your wisdom and experience, you have
inaugurated a Tripartite Committee (TC) that was shouldered the responsibility
of coming up with a reasonable National Minimum Wage (NMW) after some
deliberations. Currently, the TC has finished its work and has submitted its
recommendations to you and, at the same time, the NLC/TUC also made their
recommendations to you. All eyes are now on you, Your Excellency.
The common man who is not earning monthly salaries is also
looking up to you for the outcome of your wise decision on the new NMW.
Your Excellency Sir, you may wish to recall that all these
demands by the NLC/TUC are products of inflations that hit almost all essential
basic commodities needed by the common man to live a decent life. Many
attributed such inflations to the fuel pump price that almost tripled since
your assumption of office as a result of subsidy removal.
Moreover, the recent inflation in the prices of essential
commodities has gone beyond the predictions, explanations, laws and theories of
macro and microeconomics. The hike in prices has become a norm to the extent
that almost every day, no one is certain to buy what s/he bought some few hours
ago not to talk of a day or more.
Your Excellency Sir, of all the countries I was opportune to
visit in my life, I have never seen a country and people the like of our dear
country, Nigeria. Many countries and businesses reduce prices of almost all
goods and services during festive periods such as Ramadan Fasting, Christmas,
New Year, Sallah or any national or local occasion. Customers used to delay
mass purchases and wait for these festive sessions to enjoy discounts. On the
contrary, it is only in my country, Nigeria that businesses are targeting these
festive seasons to increase prices. What a wicked, inhuman, unsympathetic and
unpatriotic decision.
Your Excellency Sir, it is only in Nigeria that I have seen
and bear witness that a citizen would buy a bag of 100kg bag of grains, for
example, beans, at a rate of N40,000 to N50, 000, hoard it and happily sells it
at N155, 000! This means making a profit of over N100,000 per bag, yet s/he is
happy, sleeping well and enjoying the proceeds with his family. Only in Nigeria
could this inhuman and wicked thinking happen. Only in Nigeria could this kind
of heartless, wicked, unsympathetic and unpatriotic citizens exist while their
fellow citizens, brothers, sisters, in-laws, nieces, cousins, nephews and name
them are dying of hunger and abject penury. This and other reasons are the
brains behind the NLC/TUC’s demand for a new NMW. In fact, if care is not taken,
these kinds of wicked people would not mind making a profit of N200,000 or more
per 100kg bag of grains. Things are really hard for the commoners, Your
Excellency Sir.
THE WAY OUT
Your Excellency Sir, the way out of this problem is that
your government need to do something urgently if only to stop and reverse the
increasing prices of essential commodities so the commoners can have an easy
life. Some countries are putting subsidies on electricity and essential basic
commodities to ease the sufferings of their citizens while others are
subsidising the basic inputs for manufacturers of these commodities. But in
Nigeria, no matter how much is put to subsidise the commodities, a few wicked
people would connive with the manufacturers and buy and hoard the products to
create artificial scarcity so that prices could go up. Hence, in Nigeria,
subsidies for these commodities would not work.
Your Excellence Sir, I recommend a legislative establishment
of the National Goods and Services Pricing Regulatory Agency (NGSPRA) under a
Director General who would be answerable to the Honourable Minister of Budget
and Economic Planning. The agency’s primary objective is to ensure that all
goods and services in Nigeria are coded with a special code number relevant to
them for ease of identification. These coded goods and services would have a
price attached to them individually, which is covered by the law. This means
for any single service’s or item’s price to change, there must be proper
legislation to that effect. Therefore, nobody individually or in groups and no
company has the right to increase the price of any commodity without writing to
the agency who would forward the same to the legislators for all the
legislative protocols. This would mean the request for an increment in any
price of goods or services must be debated and passed into law, otherwise no
price increase.
However, this recommendation may seem impractical to many
Nigerians especially those who are in the business of hoarding and
manufacturing, but the truth is that it is really practicable with the proper
people in places of authorities of the agency. Other countries are doing
something similar to this and are safe from the arms of unnecessary inflation
and inhuman price hikes.
Your Excellency Sir, since Nigeria’s economy appeared to
defy many economic laws, theories and or predictions, then the approach to
resolving such problems means a Nigerian approach. One such approach is the
establishment of this kind of agency with strong power of authority to severely
deal with defaulters and law violators. Coming up with such an agency, Your
Excellency is not going to be easy. You have to be strong, determined and
straightforward if you decide to establish it. Many individuals and groups
would challenge the decision but I assure you it is going to bring an end to
the sufferings of the common citizens.
Your Excellency Sir, hold me responsible if this giant
gesture does not guarantee your second term bid. Even the fiercest of your
opposition would come to bow down to you with this decision. If you wish Your
Excellency, Sir, you could even bring down the NMW if prices are reduced by the
agency to the barest minimum, for example price of years before 2015!
Consequently, Your Excellency Sir, I am urging you to forget
about coming up with the new NMW and invite the NLC/TUC and other stakeholders
to deliberate on how to establish the NGSPRA. I am sure the organised labour
would give you a listening ear because all that they are after is easing the
sufferings of the masses. The organised labour and the stakeholders would study
the possible challenges that may likely confront the agency and would at the
same time come up with proper solutions to them.
Permission has been granted to any individual, group or
Press House that found this write-up worthy to share, reproduce, print and or
circulate.
Long live Our President
His Excellency Ahmad Bola Tinubu
Long Live the Federal Republic of Nigeria
From:
Jamil Mikhail Yahaya
Doctor of Philosophy in Science Education
Federal College of Education (Technical) PMB 060 Gombe,
Gombe State
jamil2000.jmy@gmail.com
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