Following the directive by President Bola Tinubu that the National Economic Council should come up with palliative measures and minimum wage review to cushion the effect of the subsidy removal on Nigerians, some economists have tasked the government not to leave behind non-civil servants.
They said the measures must make provision for all the segments of society, as much as the minimum wage review impacts directly workers.
The NEC, led by Vice President, Kashim Shettima, has state governors and some others as members.
An economist and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Uyo, Prof Akpan Ekpo, in an interview with our correspondent on Thursday, noted that only about 10 to 15 per cent of Nigeria’s working population are civil servants and that it was important to include those in the informal sector.
He stated, “There is a large informal sector where the pay is even lower than the minimum wage and they are Nigerians, so, what do you do to help those ones? They can transfer (money) until things stabilise because when you increase the minimum wage, again, prices will go up.
“You do some analysis and make sure that for those that have accounts, you transfer to their account monthly for a while, because once you review this (minimum wage), inflation will increase beyond what oil subsidy removal has done. And then while doing that, make sure that insecurity is dealt with so that farmers can go to farms and there will be more food production so prices can go down. Also, make sure you provide mass transport at a cheap rate.”
He added that the government should have been proactive about the removal of the subsidy, noting that the palliative measures could have been negotiated with stakeholders ahead. He also called on employers in the private sector to also review the wages of their workers and consider other benefits that would cushion the effect on its workers.
Also, the Chief Executive Officer, Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise and former Director-General of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Dr Muda Yusuf, stressed that government should invest in mass transit at a subsidised rate.
He called on the government to work with those in the food industry, so as to have a regulated food price as a means of reducing the effect of inflation.
He added, “One thing they can do is to provide more public transportation that can be subsidised because it’s not in all cases that subsidy is bad.
“Imagine in Lagos now, if you double the number of BRT buses and you make sure that they don’t increase their price, they have the price before subsidy was removed, the low-income earners can take advantage of it and such things should go across the states because they now have more money to be able to do something,” he said.
He added that the government should engage private sector employers to explore the possibility of working remotely as some state governments were already adopting and for employers to also consider providing staff buses for their workers.
