Buhari plans to cut salaries of civil servants

The Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed has revealed plans by President Muhammadu Buhari to cut the salaries of Federal civil servants.

The minister disclosed this on Tuesday while speaking at a policy dialogue on corruption and cost of governance in Nigeria, organised by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission.

According to the minister, the proposed salary cut is aimed at reducing the high cost of governance.

“Mr President has directed that the salaries committee that I chair, work together with the Head of Service and other members of the committee to review the government payrolls in terms of stepping down on cost,’’ she said.

“As part of this plan we will also review the number of government agencies in terms of their mandates, adding that the government will consider merging two agencies with the same mandate.”

Ahmed also expressed concern on the yearly recycled budget from MDAs.

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“The federal government is determined to remove some superfluous items from the budget in order to cut the cost of governance in the country.”

“Yearly we see government expenditure increase to a terrain twice higher than our revenue, that is because the nation’s budgets are filled with projects that are recycled over and over again and most times are also not necessary,” she stated

Ripples Nigeria earlier reported that the director-general of the Budget Office, Ben Akabueze was calling for the creation of six regions to replace the existing 36 states, in order to reduce the cost of governance.

“No country can develop where a large part of its earnings is spent on administrative structures rather than on capital investment,” Akabueze said.

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