Photo credit: Pulse Nigeria
The Day of The Jackal is a thriller written in 1971 by the British novelist Frederick Forsight. It is the story of a plot by the French paramilitary organisation, OAS, to assassinate Charles de Gaulle. Charles de Gaulle was the French president.
It is a fiction!
The jackal is a wild animal. It is an omnivore. The interesting thing, at least for this write up, is that it is a scavenger.
The organised labour is amidst negotiations for an increase in the minimum wage paid to workers. The last review was done in 2011 by the Jonathan administration.
However, as usual I have my misgivings about the issue at stake. This is because some vital things should be put in place to make any increment worth its while.
The waste constituted by administering the government should be plugged. The emoluments earned by the legislators should be drastically reduced. I am of the opinion that we could even have part-time legislators.
There should be a restructuring of the nation in a way that the constituent units control the resources in their respective spaces. When this is done, states will not be obliged to be paying equal salaries. And, of course, the monthly voyage to Abuja for allocations will be brought to an end.
I will want a situation where, rather than monetary compensation, workers’ worths in life are increased. If done, it will benefit much more people and has an advantage of reducing inflation.
The first thing is power. If there is stable supply of electricity, it will reduce the people’s dependence on fuel consuming generating sets.
Another is machanised agriculture. If we are serious about agriculture and we add value to our agricultural products, agriculture will be a worthy replacement for crude oil in earning the much needed foreign exchange. What’s more, it has the propensity of employing a lot of people.
The next thing is the provision of good roads. This has an advantage of making people get wherever in record time.
Housing too should be considered. Many workers will like to own their own houses. Mortgage policies could be promoted by building associations. This would save a lot of people from the havocs caused by land owners, a.k.a. omo onile.
Then we have potable water. Public waterworks should be reestablished. This is a must so that people will not contact water borne diseases.
Once there is power supply, many of the business concerns that fled Nigeria because of lack of electricity will start coming back. Nigeria has that attraction for would be investors.
Government and commercial banks should also offer unemployed graduates who have business ideas loans so that they won’t keep on waiting for nonexistent white collar jobs.
It is only after these steps have been taken that any salary increment can stand the test of time. If not, we run the risk of replacing inflation with hyper inflation.
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