From Okwe Obi, Abuja
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has charged President Bola Tinubu to sack ineffective ministers.
HURIWA’s National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, in a statement yesterday, claimed that out of 45 ministers, less than 20 have been up and doing, while the rest operate like ‘ghost ministers’ with zero impacts to the generality of the citizens of Nigeria.
Onwubiko, also, called on President Tinubu to, in the spirit of the high costs of living, cut down on the extremely high cost of running the Federal government.
He said the government should not be adamant and insensitive to the clarion calls to downsize the Federal cabinet and cut down the cost of governance but instead has kept an over-bloated cabinet.
According to him, the figure was based on the recommended salaries and allowances for ministers and commissioners by the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Commission.
“Aside from the annual basic salaries, the figure includes such as allowances for accommodation (200 per cent of basic salary), domestic staff (75 per cent of basic salary), utilities (30 per cent of basic salary), house maintenance (five per cent of basic salary), wardrobe (25 per cent of basic salary), furniture (300 per cent of basic salary), motor vehicle fuelling allowance (75 per cent of basic salary), and entertainment allowance (45 per cent of basic salary), among others.
“The furniture allowance is paid once every four years.
“It is not a good record that President Tinubu set for himself for appointing the highest number of ministerial appointees in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic (1999 to date) with 48, which experts said would likely worsen the high governance costs.
“The President’s ministers topped the 42 appointed by his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, in 2019 by five more persons just as the Rights group lamented the deterioration of the quality of service delivery by the members of the Federal Executive Council constituted by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu going by the groundswell of opinions by majority of Nigerians that for the first time in the political historicity of the country, there seems to be many ‘ghost’ members of the Federal cabinet at the moment,” he said.