A Chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Delta State, Chief Sunny Onuesoke, has said the solution to Nigeria’s economic problem is not an increase in the minimum wage, but deflation of the economy.
Onuesoke, in a chat with Vanguard said wage increment would not solve the economic problem in the country, but would increase it.
According to him, Nigerians were getting it wrong.
His words: “What Nigeria wanted is deflation. If you increase the salary to one million Naira today, the prices of goods and services will keep increasing. The more you increase the minimum wage, the more it goes ‘pari passu’ with the increase of goods and services. The average person who is not in the civil service but produce food items like pepper, tomatoes, yam, garri etc will increase his produce.
“Wage increase cannot match resolve the inflation rate because as there is more salary increase, there are more currency in circulating in the system. When there is more currency flow in the system, the prices of goods and services will keep increasing. It is a simple economic theory. The more increases in workers’ salaries, the more you will build up the high inflation rate’’.
“The country is not being controlled by only civil servants alone. The civil servant is just 14 per cent of those providing services in Nigeria. They are insignificant margins. When you are thinking of civil servants, the private sectors are not addressed as civil servants. There is no private sector that will be able to pay that amount of money as salary monthly.
“The people need social infrastructure that will downsize, that will deflate, that will reduce the hard side of their hardship. What I am saying is that the Federal Government and state governors should intensify massive agricultural and housing programme. They should subsidise and reduce the cost of education. Health insurance should be all embracing.
“Our problem is that we are giving projection without knowing the database of Nigerians. If you ask our leaders how many acres of land will produce a certain quantity of cassava, they don’t know it. But they go on air to produce certain figures borrowed from armchair economics or from their brain.
“Each local government should be able to have 80,000 acres of farmland of cassava. Yam, maize, rice etc. They should fix the refineries. What stops the country not to fix the four refineries till tomorrow? Is it a problem to fix the refineries? Why are we importing refined products and we are number six oil producing country in the world.”
