Imo state will pay the Minimum wage

Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo has said that the state government will pay N18,000 minimum wage to workers, adding that no Nigerian worker should earn anything less.

The governor made the promise while briefing newsmen in Owerri on the activities of his administration in the last one month.

He said the payment of the new wage had become a law.

Okorocha said that the Southeast governors at a recent meeting resolved to pay the wage and that there was no going back on it.

“And let’s be honest with that, if N18,000 is what we are talking about, it is only fair that nobody in Nigeria should receive anything less than N18,000.

“With less than N18,000, how are you going to work? If you have four children, how would you cope? Even the N18,000 is still too small.

“I believe in the masses and that is the best thing we can do for them,” he said.

Okorocha added that the Governors’ Forum was only agitating for a review of the revenue sharing formula to enable the governors to pay the new wage.

The governor said that while the Federal Government received 52 per cent, states and local governments received 48 per cent of the nation’s revenue.

He expressed concern over the N40 billion bond collected by the administration of former Imo Governor Ikedi Ohakim, saying the state was likely to review the contract.

“The current state government is not comfortable with the payment of N1.6 billion on interest annually for the bond, afterall, the Oguta Wonderlake for which the facility was obtained does not even exist,” Okorocha said.

He announced that a judicial panel of inquiry had been set up to look into cases of abandoned and on-going projects in the state, arguing that some contracts were “over-priced.”

“The intention is not to witch-hunt anybody but to warn contractors against the inflation of contracts,” Okorocha said.

He also said that the N430 million contract for the renovation of the Imo Concord Hotel had been terminated.

He added that the state government spent more than N850 million on the project without achieving any success.

Okorocha reiterated his determination to sanitise the local government system, describing the councils as “the bane of the problems in the state.”

The governor alleged that a lot of fraud were being perpetrated at the local government councils, hence their dissolution by the government and the setting up of a panel of inquiry to examine their activities.

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