Politics

New minimum wage meant to bridge gap between top, low grade civil servants – Gov Otti

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The Abia State governor, Dr. Alex Otti has said that the essence of  the  recently established Minimum Wage in the country is to  bridge  the gap between the lowest- and the highest-paid civil servant  in the nation’s civil service, since they all buy from the same market).

The governor hinted that some adjustments will continue to be done in the minimum wage and  consequential adjustments, based on the availability of funds and ability of governments to pay.

Gov. Otti made the clarification at his January, 2025 monthly  Media parley at the Government House, Umuahia, tagged:” Gov. Otti speaks to Abians”, in answer to a question thrown to him by a journalist, over the weekend.

He said discussions were still on-going on the implementations of the new minimum wage with interest parties.

At that  monthly  media chart, the governor was confronted with  some differentials observed  in the implementation of the new Minimum wage, whereby  the take home of  junior civil servants  have almost become same with  or higher than those in the middle-level cadre.

In answer to another question on the unpaid  gratuity and arrears of pensions owed to pensioners in the state by the past administrations in Abia, Governor Otti  remarked that he would  not re-visit  the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) reached with the leadership of  the Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP), and the state government last year, saying “ pensioners in Abia state are honest, but the leaderships are dishonest.”

He said, “We went back to payment of arrears of unpaid pensions left by previous administrations because we found out that it was the right thing to do. If we had wanted to play the same gimmick they played in the past, we could have equally abandoned such payments and went ahead with governance.”

Business Hallmark understands that several factions have emerged in the Abia state branch of the NUP, with each claiming to be genuine and speaking for  pensioners in  Abia. While a faction is saying their leaders signed the MoA in error, the other faction is claiming  that their leaders did not sign the MoA presented to Government.

Yet,  there is another budding faction of NUP, which involves those pensioners appealing for a review of the monthly take home of pensioners by governments in the country, especially, for those retirees  still getting less than N5,000 as pension per month .

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This group argues that  most pensioners still collect as little as N2,000 as pension, which cannot go anywhere in the contemporary Nigeria.

Gov Otti to build stadium in Umuahia 

Another cheering news that arose from the question and answer session, for sports-lovers, was the plan by the Abia state government to enter into public-private – partnership initiative to build a 40,000 capacity International Sports Stadium for Umuahia, the state capital.

In the words of the governor: ”Umuahia requires a standard Sports Stadium.  For that, we are engaging a private entrepreneur to produce a design for a 40,000  capacity Umuahia Township Stadium. It will be contractor/ financed.  It will not cost the state government much.

“Construction is expected to commence  by June this year. On completion, the contractor will be given some period to recoup his money before handing over the stadium to government”.

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