We are not elected to pay salaries only - 36 State Governors

The 36 Governors under the Nigerian Governors Forum, NGF, insisted that the people also want other sectors improved and all the expectations of the people can't be met without funds.

Abdulaziz Yari, Zamfara state governor and the chairman of the NGF made the revelation on Thursday, August 16, 2018.

“I don’t think you people voted us for only to pay salaries. You are looking for good roads, electricity, education, and others. So, we can’t do magic. It’s only when we have the funds do all those things,” Yari said.

The governor also lamented that states governments have been limited to only paying of salaries while other sectors such as health, electricity, education lack special attention.

The governors reacted to the proposed minimum wage after they were represented by six of their members in a discussion of the committee working on the minimum wage headed by the Labour minister, Dr. Chris Ngige.

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Yari's reaction to the minimum wage increase

Reacting to the discussion on the proposed increased minimum wage, Yari said, “We have a committee of six which represented us in discussions in the committee headed by labour minister.

“The committee is yet to give us the final report. When they give us the final report, for which they have our mandate to present our position, and the position most likely is to look at the record of up to 14 years.

“For instance, in global practice, in your income, how much are you spending as salary? So that we can start from there. They have given us interim report, that at the federal government level, over 82 percent is being spent on overhead which cannot move the country forward in terms of infrastructure development and development that we need now.

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“So, on our own part, we are saying we are going to look at how our income is trained from our final account from 14 years ago so that we can come up and stay in the middle."

Despite the federal government's decision to roll out a new minimum wage for workers in September 2018, September for rolling, governors are insisting on the ability to pay the salaries.

The governors had said they cannot perform any magic as funds are needed for these implementations despite owing backlogs of salaries.