Do Buhari and Osinbajo need fantastic salary?

By Abdullahi M. Gulloma

Buhari and I need salary review, says Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who calls for an upward review of their monthly take-home-pay. Speaking at a retreat organised by the State House Press Corps in Abuja, Osinbajo said the N1.7 million monthly salary for the President and the about N1.5 million for the Vice President were not fantastic wages.
Fantastic! Do Buhari and Osinbajo need fantastic wage? No. Thankfully, the Vice President has identified those who need fantastic wage when he condemned some media organisations for their inability to pay salaries of their workers.
Of course, it’s needless to state that such journalists feed, clothe themselves and pay their children school fees and, above all, at the risk of wasting their life, go out on daily basis to report activities of government and private sector officials and unfolding crisis and violence, orchestrated and sponsored by some unpatriotic and corrupt members of the ruling class.
Unfortunately, media organisations that deliberately refuse to pay workers their remunerations, mainly because, as Osinbabajo said, “some employers have the penchant to cheat the workers and also because the private sector does not recognise minimum wage.”
Of course, the remarks by Osinbajo that media practitioners were being denied salaries mainly because the profession does not have recognised entry point, thus allowing non-professionals to overwhelm it, only serves to reveal government’s unwillingness to champion rights of workers.
The the important thing to do now is for the government and key players in the sector to help media practitioners to become experts in their own profession and guarantee payment of their remuneration as that is the only way to make journalists withstand the challenges of their chosen profession.
Essentially, it should be recognized that workers are citizens, whose taxes are used to make the lives of leaders comfortable and whose rights must be safeguarded by government.

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