Fuel Subsidy Removal: FG Plans Cash Award For Civil Servants

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – The Federal Government on Thursday disclosed plans for cash award for civil servants to cushion the effect of the fuel subsidy removal by the President Bola Tinubu administration.

The cash award policy was one of the decisions taken at the meeting of the National Economic Council (NEC) on Thursday held at the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa presided over by Vice President Kashim Shettima

Briefing State House Correspondents at the end the NEC meeting, Governor of Ogun State, Prince Dapo Abiodun said that the cash award would be in form of money that would be paid to civil servants for six months.

According to him, the cash award would not attract any tax, stressing that the policy would offer relief to workers as a short term measure to ensure that workers are able to cope with transportation cost to work.

Abiodun also disclosed that a sub-committee of NEC was set up, stressing that the council proposed that each state should operate a cash transfer programme and have its own social register.

He said that the council considered a single digit interest rate for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) as another measure to ensure that businesses thrive to encourage 4conomic growth.

The Ogun State Governor pointed out the conversion of vehicles to run on Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) instead of Petrol

Also speaking at the briefing, Anambra state Governor, Professor Charles Soludo maintained that NEC stressed the need to cut down on the cost of governance.

According to him, NEC recognised that cutting down on cost of governance was an issue that each tier of government should now focus on as an area of concern.

“We need to be sensitive to the times, we need to live within the average of the people that we’re governing, so on and so forth. And knock off the waste and the irrelevances so to speak”

” When I assumed office, for example, it was costing about 137 million every month to clean up public offices, and so on. Today, in Anambra we’re doing N11 million a month from N137 million on a monthly basis, just an illustration.

“And it’s a thing that we’re persuading each and every one of us to look into what you know, check into our books and look ourselves in the mirror and move with the times. Is not that the council sat and begin to prescribe, you have 12 number of advisors or five we didn’t get to that but each person will do that”, he added

While speaking about the social register, Soludo said, “I think at the council today, there was almost near unanimity among members that there’s a big question mark about the integrity of the so called National Social Register. We have questions about how those names in the register were brought about and I’m sure one question I hear asked is where it is for the most vulnerable group, and so on and so forth.

“let me even give you an example. If you’re just think about it. Let’s talk about a social register. And that distributing things through the social register by digital means, implying that these people already they have account numbers and they have phone numbers. Maybe they must be talking about some other people, not Nigerians. The poorest 25 per cent of Nigerians are largely if not totally unbanked, and they don’t have access to telephone. It is of the poorest of the poor, he said.

According to him, “integrity test is what is missing with that register. Many have just described what is being counted as National Register as either bogus. Some described it as phantom, some is in all manner of terms. So we need to face the problem, the fact that we don’t have a credible register and get back to work on this”

Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed disclosed at the briefing that the Federal Government has ordered immediate release of grains and fertilizers to Nigerians through the Central Bank of Nigeria to mitigate the removal of petroleum subsidy.

According to him, this step would bring down the prices of food items and ensure food security

Acting Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Folashodun Shonubi at the briefing said the the chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue made presentation on what they have done so far.

Shonubi disclosed that the level of collections, the FIRS was ahead of its target for half year, stressing that there are expectations that before or by the end of the year, the agency would exceed the revenue target.

“They also gave us some idea of what next year should be like from them. And from this year, we hope to make some N10 trillion. It is planning that next year, we should be able working with all the agencies provide N25 trillion as their contribution to the national coffers”, Shonubi said.