The Nigerian government has stopped funding the Nigerian Press Council (NPC), a development said to put the staffers in tight corner and being owed salary from January till date, as the workers described their living conditions as pathetic.
Penpushing reports that the funding stoppage also affected overhead of the establishment, while the workers pleaded with the government to rescind its decision in the interest of the council and their welfare.
The workers lamented that following the circular from the Budget Office, they have not received salaries since January, while record has it that the Nigerian Press Council Act No 85 of 1992, was established under the Ministry of Information and National Orientation and is statutorily empowered to ensure ethical press standards and maintain high professional standards for the Nigerian press.
Penpushing further reports that one of the workers, Kolo Ibrahim, narrating his ordeal in reference to the development said he has been begging friends and relatives in order to feed his immediate family members and pay his children’s school fees.
“I have become an object of ridicule and stigmatisation; people have stopped lending me money because there is no hope of paying back. I am appealing to President Bola Tinubu to hear our cry and rescind his decision on this so that we can deliver our mandate’, he said.
Penpushing also reports that Dan Gomna, another staff of the establishment lamented that his children had dropped out of school because he could no longer pay their school fees, stressing that to feed his immediate family has become herculean task
“Feeding my family is a heavy burden. I have to beg to feed my wife and four children. I am owing my landlord, and he has given me up to December 31 to pay my rent or pack out of his property’, Gomna added.
I am sure that all workers in NPC are facing difficulties. I beg President Tinubu, in the name of God, to help us. We are suffering due to lack of salaries for eight months and still counting’, the staffer emphasised.
Penpushing reports that a lawyer, Yemi Oyebamiji, while reacting to the disturbing and ugly development faulted the government’s decision to halt funding of an institution without amending the Act establishing it.
‘I know this administration has promised to implement the Stephen Oronsaye-led Committee Report on federal civil service reform on learner government. However, the exercise should be done with the due process of the law. I am not aware of any amendment to the statute establishing the council to the effect that government will no longer fund it’, he stated.
“Assuming without conceding that it has been amended, implementing it should be with a human face. Where do you expect an organisation like the Nigerian Press Council, that has been bedevilled with many challenges, to source funding for workers’ salaries and its operations from?” he queried.
Penpushing further reports that Oyebamiji appealed to the Nigerian government to reconsider its decision, for the sake of the council’s workers, adding that alternatively, if the government found no usefulness in the council, it should be scrapped legally and its workers redeployed or paid off.
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