The chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), Dr Kayode Fayemi, has said that federal salary structure should not be imposed on states.
Fayemi, who doubles as governor of Ekiti State, said this when he hosted pro-chancellors of state-owned universities yesterday.
Justifying his stance, the NGF’s chairman said the federal and state government do not have similar economic situations.
This was contained in a statement by the Head, Media and Public Affairs of NGF Secretariat, Abdulrazaqak Bello-Barkindo yesterday.
Bello-Barkindo quoted Fayemi to have made the statement during the deliberation with the pro-chancellors on solutions to problems of state-owned tertiary institutions.
“You can’t impose a federal salary structure on states because we do not all have the same economic or financial situations.
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“ I, for example, do not have the resources of Lagos State, so you won’t expect me to earn the same salary as the governor of Lagos,” Fayemi said.
The NGF chairman added that it was true that no state had fulfilled payment of salaries to states universities, but states were not always solely responsible for this.
“The people you appoint as vice chancellors need to speak truth to power, they need to be able to bite the bullet, and not just be a YES person.
“We need to work together to confront these issues, we are running glorified secondary schools as universities by this system and you have to help us in insisting that the institutions too, do the right thing,” he added.
Fayemi agreed with the pro-chancellors that politics should not be involved in the nation’s school system, even though he argued that there were very smart people in politics in Nigeria.
