Trade Union Congress (TUC) has slammed 36 state governors for mismanaging funds that should be utilized to address critical issues in their states.
Naijaonpoint reports that the National President of TUC, Festus Osifo, said most governors placed priority on building flyovers rather than addressing education gaps, and lack of primary healthcare facilities in their states.
He stated this on Wednesday while speaking in an interview with Channels TV.
Osifo said the organized labour was more concerned about how the Tax Reform Bill would activate responsible governance at the sub-national levels.
He stressed that the Tax Reform Bill has the potential to activate the governors to be productive in managing their states.
“We are focused as of today on what the tax bill provides; in terms of the productivity of a state and how these funds are being utilized. Over this period we have virtually championed the fact that most of the sub-nationals they are really unproductive. They deploy revenues to where revenues are not supposed to be deployed. When you go to some of these states you see the rural areas people are suffering; people are passing through excruciating difficulties but they spend money in building flyovers, as if that is where life ends.
“They count the number of flyovers they’ve been able to build in a state where there are issues around maternal mortality, where there are issues around primary health care, where there are issues around primary education.
“So that is a misplacement of priority that has occurred in some of these sub-nationals, the state government. So these we have highlighted over time,” he said.
The Trade Union Congress president disclosed that it was pressure and constructive engagment of organized labour state chapters that forced governors to accept governors to accept minimum wage.
“A lot of our state chapters are, Labour as well, also championing those conversations. When issues of the minimum wage came across the state levels what happened eventually was that some of the states were able to raise the minimum wage above the threshold of 70,000.
“Those were the conversations that the states’ TUC and also NLC put forward to ensure that minimum wage was raised.
“They asked some of these vital questions; how are you allocating your resources today? The money that is available to you both from the federal accounts and internet revenue has doubled how has this affected the lives of your people?” Osifo added.