Goodluck Jonathan Cuts Salaries Of Government Appointees Including His And That Of Sambo

IN a display of leadership-by-example in these belt-tightening times brought about by the slump in crude oil price at the international market, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has ordered a 30 per cent pay cut for all political appointees in the Executive arm of government including himself and the Vice President.
But there is a new twist over the pay cut initiative by the President yesterday as a dependable source at the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMFAC) told The Guardian that the President lacks the power to implement a pay cut unilaterally without the Commission’s approval.
The source who asked not to be named, however, confirmed that the Commission was in receipt of a request from President Jonathan on the matter but said the request may not sail through because it does not for now see the need for the pay cut, pointing out that a similar development played out around 2009 and 2010 when the late President Umaru Yar’Adua made the request of pay cut in the face of falling oil prices.
With crude oil mineral resources constituting more than 80 per cent of Nigeria’s revenue stream, the country’s liquidity condition has, expectedly, been jolted since the third quarter of last year when prices at the international market headed downwards until recently when it began a gradual recovery.
The slide downwards has made it very difficult for the funding of the capital components of the 2014 fiscal plan as envisioned. Consequent upon this, the current fiscal plan still with the National Assembly presents a very tight and austere budget with some of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) getting zero allocations for capital expenditure, the scrapping of certain redundancies within the public service and introduction of alternative areas of revenue generation to make up for the more than 50 per cent drop in revenue from the petroleum sector.
Now, in addition to those unveiled earlier by the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala when she presented the 2015 spending plan on December 17 last year, which include the introduction of taxes on luxury items and first class and business class air travel taxes, Jonathan has directed a 30 per cent pay cut for all political appointees in the Executive arm as part of sacrifice to free up revenue for funding of the yet to be passed plan.
The Director -General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Dr. Bright Okogu, who revealed this at the weekend when he spoke to The Guardian exclusively in Abuja, said the directive takes immediate effect. All classes of political appointees including Permanent Secretaries and Heads of Federal Government agencies are affected by the pay cut order.
His words: “Political office holders’ salaries are being cut by between 20-30 per cent, ranging from permanent secretaries, directors’ general and so on all the way to ministers. This, however, does not amount to very much, but the purpose is to show the commitment of this administration that if they want to make adjustment, they want to do it and lead by.
“Beyond this pay cut, you can also look at the expenditure side and see pruning measures such as some of the things the people do on a yearly basis to decorate offices. We are encouraging government officials to delay such things like getting new office buildings or such things. We are going to focus on things that are really important for recurrent spending.
‘‘And the final point I wish to make relates to the Oransaye Report which you may have heard of. The Federal Government initiated this and has gone through the whole process. The report has been submitted, the White Paper is out but what has happened is that some merging entities may lead to loss of jobs.
‘‘The aim here is to streamline the activities of these agencies and save government some money and then fund the ones that are left, better. If necessary, you can deploy such staff to other areas of government where they are needed, so you are not laying people off.
‘‘The President has told us severally, that the ideas he has are not to deny people their jobs. He knows that every single person that is working and earning salary is taking care of other five, six extra people in the immediate and extended families. So this is not a matter of saying you want to throw people out of jobs.
This is very clear, when it comes to job protection and creation. The President is very concerned and he supports us 100 per cent in some of the policies we have developed as a team over the years.”