By Ijendu Iheaka
November. 24, 2016
Prof. Innocent Eleazu
of Roxbury Community College, Massachusetts, USA on Thursday urged the federal government to start its moves to take the nation out of recession by removing "two zeros" from the entitlements of Nigerian legislators.
Eleazu who is a professor of Economics at Roxbury
Community College, Massachusetts, USA, made this assertion in Aba at a lecture
titled “Recession in a mono-economy, challenges and consequences” organized by the Aba Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (ACCIMA).
He said that following the “circular flow model” in
economics, an economic problem created in one segment of the economy invariably
affects and transfers to other segments.
According to him, paying a legislator a whooping N352,
756, 988.00 (Three hundred and fifty two million, Seven hundred and fifty six thousand,
Nine hundred and eighty-eight naira) annually was hurting to the economy.
Defining economic recession as decline in economic
activities, Eleazu said that the huge government payments to legislators were
taking away funds that should build infrastructures to revive the economy.
Eleazu warned that should the alarming rate at which
the gap between the poor and the rich in Nigeria was widening continue unchecked;
the rich would soon lose their security.
He therefore
called on the government to act quickly to arrest this trend before it became
too late.
He called on the government to declare war on
poverty stressing that it would be a mistake to declare war on corruption
without first declaring war on poverty.
He said that although some Nigerians stole not because they were poor, it was still a known fact that poverty was often a precursor to
corruption.
He urged employers to pay up their workers adding that paying workers’ salaries by government and non-government employers was a sure way
of getting Nigeria out of a recession.
He said that paying workers’ salaries which ensured
they worked more and spent more money would increase economic activity and in
return revive the nation’s economy.
“Hoarding money and refusing to pay salaries or give
loans to manufacturers was a sure way of escalating the effect of the recession
and making it last long. This is unacceptable if we want the recession to go
away soonest”, he said.
Eleazu also urged the federal government to do a
census of Nigeria’s households to understand its population trends in order to
help it plan for its people.
He said that it would be difficult for the nation to
plan and prepare for economic challenges like a recession which could not be
avoided if it did not have the statistics of its households.
He noted that the nation should not worry about
economic recessions which were a part of a capitalist economy but should plan to
ensure that they were always short-lived when they come.
In his address, the Abia state governor, Dr Okezie
Ikpeazu thanked the scholar for bringing home his learning to his people and
thus contributing to the state’s progress.
The governor said he was concerned in the welfare of
the manufacturers in Aba hence the moves to ensure that they reaped the fruits
of their labour without losing them to middlemen.
He said that at a time when leadership and
structures in Nigeria were failing the people, the ACCIMA should live legacies of good leadership.
The governor was represented at the lecture by the Abia
State Commissioner for Housing, Mr Osita Igbe.
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