Cleric suggests downward review of remuneration to check politicians’ desperation
Remuneration
By Muftau Ogunyemi
Akure, May 5, 2018(NAN) Worried by politicians’ desperation for elective offices, Alhaji Abdulhakeem Yayi-Akorede, Chief Imam of Akure, has suggested a downward review of the wages and emoluments of elective positions to make them less attractive.
“Government organs responsible for wages and emoluments of senators and members of other federal and state law making organs should reduce their salaries and allowances to make the positions less attractive.
“There is too much desperation for such offices and we cannot continue like this,” the cleric told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday in Akure.
According to him, if there is less money to be shared, there won’t be enough reasons for politicians to buy voters to win elections at all costs.
He said that the real leaders ready t0 serve would only emerge if money ceased to be a main attraction for seeking public offices.
Yayi-Akorede expressed concern that teachers, who taught others to become lawmakers, medical doctors and bankers, were left to rot in misery, and urged the electorate to ask questions and insist on answers.
“Time has come for voters to do the right thing by not selling their conscience during elections.
“Children of teachers cannot afford the little fee in local universities in a country where people are bribed to vote desperate politicians. I can’t stop people from collecting such monies, but I won’t encourage people to mortgage their conscience for peanuts,” he said.
The Chief Imam, who called for sincerity in the polity and governance of the nation, charged civil servants to do their work with sincerity so as to be rewarded with divine blessings.
He cautioned civil and public servants against lateness to work places, noting that doing so was a sin.
Yayi-Akorede enjoined government to promptly pay workers salaries, saying that the nation would be great if everybody played his or her part well. (NAN)
OMA/IFY/ETS
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Edited by Ify Omowole and Ephraims Sheyin
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