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…Sam Obi to earn over N100m life pension
…Delta lawmakers really did the unthinkable
…will Okowa assent this Bill?
By Emman Ovuakporie
Laws all over the world are designed to stand the test of time and the passage of a Bill to accommodate an acting governor to earn life pension who acted for six weeks definitely cannot survive.
TNG had exclusively reported last week how the wise men in the Delta House of Assembly had seamlessly allowed the Bill to scale through second reading despite objections of few lawmakers.
Also last Wednesday, TNG reports the Bill, which has caused rancour and heated up the polity after it was first introduced to the House was read the third time and passed at a plenary session presided over by Speaker Sheriff Oborevwori
Tagged’: The Governor and Deputy Governor Pension Rights and Other Benefits (Amendment) Bill 2019′ the House inserted a clause controversially making persons who have served the State as governors in acting capacity beneficiaries of full pension.
Deltans are not lethargic Nigerians that would seat on the fence and watch their Commonwealth distributed to the very few privileged in the state.
Did it not occur to this wise men that a N100m spent annually on the youths of Delta for the next three years could have a multiplier effect on the state economy rather than spending it on one single Deltan?
Better still, a N100m spent on most flood ravaged communities annually across the state will even give the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP another window to occupy Asaba Government House in 2023?
Can’t this Senator Emmanuel Ifeanyi Okowa learn a little from its neighbor, Bayelsa where protest votes snatched the government from PDP?
Oh! It’s impossible they at the top will say so confidently but it’s not impossible because little mistakes like allowing a man that served for just six weeks to earn over N100m could catapult a protest vote.
Deltans will read a lot of meanings into it because it’s largely believed the sole beneficiary for now is the governor’s kinsman.
One of the sins of Seriake Dickson in Bayelsa was the fact that he tagged some Bayelsans as not full Ijaws and he paid dearly for it.
The cloud that blew in Bayelsa is not far from Delta, this Bill could just be the tonic that would invigorate the cloud to act the Bayelsa way in 2023.
The 1999 constitution as amended is very clear on it as it did not in any way recognised any acting capacity in governance.
Section 124(5) of the 1999 constitution as amended simply stipulates that…provisions maybe made by a law of a house of Assembly for the grant of a pension or gratuity to or in respect of a person who had held office as a gov or deputy gov and was not removed from office as a result of impeachment: and any pension granted by virtue of any provisions madein pursuance of this sub section shall be a charge upon the consolidated revenue fund of the state.
There’s no provision for an acting governor but since Delta being the second largest oil producing state is so rich it can afford to even go to the ocean and deposit the Commonwealth of the state that poverty stares the common man on a daily basis.
Zamfara a state that has no oil only recently abrogated a law that pays former governors and deputy governors N10m monthly but Delta has now accommodated acting governors.
The Delta lawmakers really exhibited absurdity never seen in any parliament world over and what could be the cause of this particularly now that they are autonomous.
The lawmakers are not a bunch of hungry men but very comfortable men who had made their marks politically.
An executive Bill that even an uneducated Deltan knows that is retrogressive was passed within three months when there’s even a Clarion call by civil societies across Nigeria to stop paying former governors pension.
It beats one’s imagination hollow that a state that parades the best of the rare best in Nigeria has such a legislative body that could not reason beyond its nose calls for a lot of questions begging for an answer.
Will Gov Okowa touch this acidic Bill laced with dreaded ebola disease with a long spoon?
The All Progressives Congress, APC has sent a warning signal over the Bill and Okowa and his legislative wise men should not forget that the APC is more United now in Delta than in 2015.
It’s the ruling party that is capable of fomenting what it considers important and look the other way and wait for you in the court where justice will never be delivered to the rightful person.
The Delta legislature this time around did the unthinkable!
But wait a minute, again, will Okowa endorse this Bill? Deltans are awaiting his action.