Income Disparity

RANDOM THOTS

A wise old man from Ekiti State put it very succinctly. To him, the current income disparity between the average man and those at the helm of power in Nigeria is a sure recipe for looming revolution and anarchy.

To the agitated octogenarian, it is simply unjustifiable and inhuman for an average worker to be earning N18,000 monthly while a Senator in the National Assembly is reportedly smiling home with more than N14 million (in allowances and salaries) in the same month.

Such income disparity and obvious inequality, he lamented, is happening in a country where all human beings and citizens are born equal, but where some appear to be more equal than others, to quote from George Orwell’s famous novel ‘The Animal Farm’.

Recently, the Minister of Labour and Employment said a new national minimum wage would be implemented from the third quarter of 2018, while speaking at the 40th anniversary celebration of the Nigeria Labour Congress in Abuja.
The same NLC had made a request to the tripartite committee on minimum wage to increase the wage to N56,000 for the least paid worker, from the current N18,000. But even the new wage is grossly insufficient by present day standards and economic conditions.

The opening part of the Nigerian Constitution states that it was fashioned by “We, the people”, although many citizens find it hard to believe that the same document was drafted to ensure an egalitarian society and equal opportunities for all Nigerians, in the face of existing corruption.

The fear now is that what happened to the favoured pigs in “Animal Farm” will not happen to the privileged class in Nigeria, especially to those rich citizens who acquired their stupendous wealth corruptly at the expense of better lives for the common man… negative omen

– Abimbola Akosile

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