SANUSI SAGA: NLC, You Are Hypocrites - CPC

The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) has accused Nigeria’s labour leaders of hypocrisy for criticizing Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who recently called for a downsizing of the bloated public workforce and scrapping of the local government system.
In a presentation at the Annual Capital Market Retreat in Warri, Delta State, on Tuesday, Mr. Sanusi advised the Federal Government to sack half of its work force to maintain a sustainable economy.
Mr. Sanusi said Nigeria could not build its economy when 70 per cent of its earnings went to salaries and entitlements of civil servants.

But the suggestions have irked labour leaders. The President of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria , TUC, Peter Esele, said in Abuja that Mr. Sanusi lacked the capacity to call for the action.
He stressed that a civil servant earned less than a dollar a day while about 170 per cent of the country’s budget was being spent on those in government.
Mr. Esele said that the governor should rather, go to the National Assembly and challenge legislators’ spending and not the civil servants.
But the CPC said by launching an offensive against the CBN governor, the labours leaders have demonstrated opportunistic and hypocritical they are.
In a statement by its spokesperson, Rotimi Fashakin, the party said, “Whilst we do not agree that the cause of the exorbitant recurrent expenditure is wholly due to the size of the public service work-force and that the sacking of half its size is the solution to the identified problem, we believe the call for the call for the sacking of the forthright Public officer for volunteering his personal opinion is equally preposterous. It is our belief that the fiscal indiscipline of this Jonathan-led administration has exacerbated the Nation’s malaise!
“We equally believe that rather vilifying the CBN governor for the commentary, this should throw up meaningful discourse on extricating the Nation from the financial recklessness of this PDP-led Federal Government. In the first place, the CBN governor is not in a position to implement policy for sacking the Nation’s public servants.
“At best, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi aired his personal opinion. We are at a loss at the nexus between his personal opinion and the strident call for his sack, except there are other sinister underpinings in this call.
“As a Party, we have equally taken note of the ignominious manner this present crop of Labour leadership truncated, in January 2012, the people’s popular refusal to yield to the exploitative tendencies of the Nation’s rulers. In the course of scuttling the people’s revolt, some of these Labour leaders got appointed into some dodgy committees that were not primed to achieve result.
“This is why we view this call by the Labour leaders for Sanusi’s sack as a cheap, opportunistic (albeit languid) ploy to crawl back to the people’s reckoning. We believe that responsible leadership is about selflessness and consistency. We advise the Nation’s Labour leaders to critically examine the policies of governments (Federal and State) that impinge on the well-being of the people instead of looking for scape-goat for cheap populism.”

Source: Premium Times