Opinion: Buhari’s controversial parting pay rise gift

Ganiyu Obaaro

President Muhammadu Buhari is not known for controversy. Those who know him would describe him  variously as frank and straightforward with a heart of steel. Even the First Lady, Aisha, family members and close friends, would attest to this human nature of the outgoing president.

But, all these may have been jettisoned by the outgoing president, who was elected in 2015 for  an initial four years in office on the platform of his party, All Progressives Congress, APC, and was re-elected in 2019, for another four years that would terminate on May 29th this year.

Buhari has obviously courted some controversy with his announcement of a pay rise for some categories of federal civil servants. Two weeks ago, following speculations that the president would put smiles on the faces of the civil servants, which his minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, eventually let out of the bag, the nation’s civil service has been unsettled.

Buhari, in a rather ‘benevolent’ move, but which analysts reason is unencompassing, announced a 40 per cent rise for the civil servants. The Federal Government has no fewer than 144,766 civil servants, although the figure was more before the huge civil reforms, which swept away several unwanted civil servants who had been accused of one infraction or the other in an exercise carried out by the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation and others. But it appears that only those in the core civil service under the consolidated public service structure will benefit from the pay increase. Some other professionals in the public sector such as medical doctors and others in the health sector such as Nurses and Midwives are excluded from it. They are not alone.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU,  still smarting from their long strike action over several demands, including funding, demand for exclusion from IPPIS pay template, which they shunned, the union has challenged the government to extend the pay rise to them. ASUU’s president, Professor Emmanuel Osodeke, has stoutly defended his union saying that they too deserve the financial largesse.

A president that is in a hurry to leave Aso Rock Villa, Abuja, for Daura, his hometown, Buhari may not accede to the aggrieved the requests of the excluded federal workers. Perhaps, it is one of the tasks cleverly being left for the President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to resolve.

Reports of many civil servants who have been receiving the alerts of the money on their phones, have been making the rounds, however. And many of them are said to be savouring the attendant ecstasy!

What with the  challenges they and other Nigerians contended with over the botched naira redesign and still contend with over other economic problems?

However, this is not the first time civil servants in the country would enjoy a pay rise. The Jerome Udoji Award of the 1970s readily comes to mind.

Under the military government of General Yakubu Gowon, civil servants were treated like beautiful brides with the award. Again, former Military President Ibrahim Babangida toed a similar path by raising civil servants’ pay in 1991/92, causing widespread applause among the civil servants.

Other Nigerians say they too deserve comprehensive and robust welfare packages from Buhari, especially following years of economic pains, poverty and security challenges they face under him. For now, the nation awaits where the pendulum will swing to.