Two motorcyclists, on Monday, lost their lives during an exchange of gunfire with policemen who prevented an attack on the Ipaja Division of the Lagos State Police Command.

PUNCH Metro gathered that the policemen embarked on the enforcement of the existing ban on motorcycle operations in the state when the motorcyclists revolted against the action.

During the protest to express their grievances against the enforcement, the state Police Public Relations Officer, Benjamin Hundeyin, said in a statement he posted on his verified handle on X.com that the motorcyclists attempted to overrun the police station.

He explained that during the exchange of gunfire between the policemen and the protesting motorcyclists, two motorcycle operators were killed.

Meet Samuel Odugbesan who lost his arms working with an electricity company0.00 / 0.00

Hundeyin wrote, “Officers of the Ipaja Police Division have successfully repelled an early morning attack on their division by motorcycle operators.

“The attack came after police officers commenced the day’s enforcement of the existing ban on motorcycles in Lagos State. The attackers, who came in their hundreds, stormed the station with dangerous weapons, shooting at the officers and attempting to overrun the station.

“While officers and men of the division held their ground, reinforcement came from the Area Command and the Rapid Response Squad. Two of the attackers were fatally injured during the attack.”

He added that no fewer than 200 motorcyclists were impounded and some suspects arrested during the incident.

Hundeyin said, “This did not deter the officers from accomplishing their mandate as over 200 motorcycles were impounded and some of the attackers arrested, with one locally made firearm retrieved.

“The Lagos State Police Command will not be cowed into abdicating its responsibilities of enforcement of all duly passed laws and maintenance of law and order within the society.”

Our correspondent, during a follow-up conversation with Hundeyin to ascertain the number of the arrested motorcyclists linked to the attempt to overrun the police station, affirmed that the arrested suspects were 22.

“Twenty-two suspects were arrested during the incident,” the PPRO told our correspondent.

PUNCH Metro gathered that during the exchange of gunfire in the area, there was panic and residents and business owners scampered to safety to escape being hurt during the incident.

In December 2023, PUNCH Metro reported that a middle-aged woman, Mrs Bisi Raji, was crushed to death when police officers clashed with commercial motorcyclists in the Abule Egba area of the state.

Mrs Raji was returning from the hospital after an appointment with her doctor around the area.

A resident who spoke to PUNCH Metro said, “The tipper ran over the woman on the head. People who were around the area could not do anything because she died instantly.

They had to get a cloth to cover her body. Her corpse was also on the roadside for hours and there was no one to recover it until the police arrived much later to retrieve the body from the spot. We learnt her family had collected her body from the police and taken her home for burial.

After years of struggle characterised by wanton arrests, imprisonment, and assassinations of pro-democracy activists, Nigeria finally returned to the path of democratic governance on May 29, 1999.

This gesture, which drove the military back to the barracks and ushered in a new dispensation, is most often referred to as Nigeria’s fourth republic. This has so far been the longest civilian rule without inference from the military since Nigeria’s independence in 1960. The journey has, however, not been smooth. The trajectory has witnessed some controversies that were weathered by the sheer will of Nigerians to strengthen their nascent democracy. Below are some of the major scandals that have rocked the democratic journey since 1999.

SALISU BUHARI AND HIS TORONTO CERTIFICATE

With barely two months into the inauguration of the 1999 set of House of Representatives members, the Green Chamber was rocked by a scandal that is arguably still one of the most daring and barefaced incidents involving a political officeholder in Nigeria.

Ibrahim Salisu Buhari, the young lawmaker from Kano State who had emerged as the Speaker of the House, was exposed to have not only falsified his age, but also presented bogus academic credentials.

According to The News Magazine, which unearthed the scandal, Buhari had claimed that he obtained a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Toronto, Canada, in 1990; a diploma in accountancy from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, in 1988; and that he served under the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in 1991. Again, Buhari was said to have been born on January 3, 1963.

But it later emerged that Salisu Buhari was actually born on January 3, 1970, making him 29 years old at the time he contested and won election to the House, whereas the constitution pegs the age limit for a member of the House at 30. It was also revealed that he actually got admission into ABU, but he was withdrawn because he falsified his credentials.

Again, available records at the time showed that he never went to the University of Toronto in Canada and did not take part in NYSC, according to The News Magazine.

Though he initially denied the allegations, the revelation that the federal government had concluded plans to prosecute him forced his hand as he tendered his resignation as speaker and member representing Nasarawa federal constituency on July 22, 1999, exactly 49 days after his election.

OBASANJO’S THIRD-TERM POLITICAL AMBITION

During the twilight of the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s second term in office, Nigeria’s political scene was thrown into pandemonium when the National Assembly was considering a move to change the constitution to allow the president to contest for a third time.

While the former president denied he ever nursed the ambition of ruling the country for another four years, the event showed the readiness of Nigerians to safeguard the democracy attained through blood and sweat.

Ken Nnamani, the Senate President at the time (2006), said at the public presentation of his book, “Standing Strong: Legislative Reforms, Third Term, and Other Issues of the 5th Senate,”  that by adjourning the senate in the course of the constitutional amendment process, some senators in support of the bill had a change of mind after interacting with their constituents.

He added that the live transmission of the plenary on May 16, 2006, when an alteration of the constitution to allow three terms for Nigeria’s presidents was being considered, forced some senators to abandon support for the bill.

Years later, the report of some lawmakers being given cash in ‘Ghana-must-go’ bags to vote in favour of the bill remained a major taint on the National Assembly.

2007 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

With the third-term presidential attempt of Obasanjo defeated, the elections that brought his predecessor, the late Umaru Musa Ya’ardua, into power were considered the worst in Nigeria’s history.

The conduct of the election made the European Union observers label it as “the worst they had ever seen anywhere in the world, with rampant vote rigging, violence, theft of ballot boxes, and intimidation.”

Apart from this submission, the inability of the INEC to adequately plan for the election threw the process into chaos, with voting commencing in some parts of the country around 5 p.m. on election day due to the late arrival of materials.

Before the election, the INEC did not include the name of Obasanjo’s embattled Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, among the presidential candidates, but the Supreme Court ruled against it a week before the election.

After the election, Ya’ardua proclaimed the election flawed and promised to enact new laws that would strengthen the electoral process.

IMBROGILO OVER JONATHAN’S STATUS IN YAR’ADUA’S ABSENCE 

Perhaps one of the most challenging periods in Nigeria’s democratic journey was when then President Umaru Musa Ya’ardua took ill and was flown to Saudi Arabia for treatment without formally handing over to his deputy as envisaged by the constitution.

His absence in the country for 10 weeks stalled governance, which prompted the National Assembly to make his vice president, Goodluck Jonathan, the acting president, a move that was opposed by members of Yar’adua’s cabinet.

The act was termed by the then Senate President, David Mark, as the “doctrine of necessity due to a lack of constitutional precedent.”

Before the solution by the National Assembly, the polity had been heated up along both religious and ethnic lines, with many from the southern part of the country where Jonathan comes, interpreting the power play as a strategic agenda to deny the South-South the opportunity to govern the country.

PATRICIA ETTEH

On June 6, 2007, Patricia Etteh became Nigeria’s first female Speaker of the House of Representatives. But the trained hairdresser and beauty therapist, who later became a lawyer, had one of the shortest tenures as the number four citizen of Nigeria.

Two months after her emergence, accusations of corruption were raised against her. She was made to face an ad hoc committee over accusations that she had authorised the spending of N628 million on renovations of her official residence and that of her deputy, and the purchase of 12 official cars meant for the House of Representatives.

During one of the committee’s sittings where she had appeared to defend herself, chants of ‘Thief!’ ‘Thief!” in Yoruba were directed at her, with the session degenerating into a commotion with the lawmakers descending into a free for all. She was eventually escorted out by the security men, and on October 30, 2007, after weeks of pressure, she resigned. Her deputy, Babangida Nguroje, also resigned.

FUEL SUBSIDY AND FAROUK LAWAN’S JOURNEY TO JAIL

In 2012, the House of Representatives’ ad hoc committee set up to probe petroleum product subsidies came up with the finding that the government overpaid some markers to the tune of N229.7 billion between 2010 and 2011.

The chairman of the committee, Faruk Lawan, the soft-spoken Kano-born lawmaker who had made a name for himself as “Mr. Integrity,” submitted the report, which contained a list of companies that had ‘defrauded’ the government, on the floor of the House. But a few days later, he became enmeshed in a bribery scandal that would later make him an inmate at Kuje Custodial Centre. A video of him receiving and stuffing wands of dollar notes into his cap, ostensibly as a bribe from one of the marketers, emerged.

Almost 10 years later, Justice Angela Otaluka of the FCT High Court convicted him and sentenced him to seven years’ imprisonment for receiving a $500,000 bribe while serving as the chairman of the House’s ad hoc committee.

The court held that Lawan demanded $3 million and received $500,000 as a bribe from Femi Otedola, a Nigerian billionaire oil mogul, in 2012. The judge held that he took the bribe to remove Otedola’s oil company, Zenon Oil and Gas, from the list of firms indicted for fraud in the fuel subsidy regime. His sentence was later reduced to five years by the Supreme Court.

OCCUPY NIGERIA PROTEST 

The Occupy Nigeria protest emanated from the decision of the government to remove the fuel subsidy, thereby increasing its cost from N65 per litre to N141.

The protest, which started on January 2, 2012, was a massive movement of Nigerians that nearly crippled the country’s economy as government workers and those in the private sector declared strikes to join the protest.

While the protest took on a political undertone as opposition parties took advantage of it, it served as an avenue for Nigerians to vent their anger over the continued rise in the cost of living and corruption in the country. The continued protest forced the government to lower the cost to N97.

RIOT AT THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

Following the defection of the then Speaker of the House of Representative, Aminu Tambuwal, to the main opposition party, security personnel blocked his access to the national assembly.

This led to chaos in the legislative arm of the country, resulting in a face-off between lawmakers and the police. The latter used tear gas to stop the lawmakers from gaining access to the complex.

With all access to the complex blocked, some of the lawmakers resorted to scaling the fence, while others forced the pedestrian gate open before Tambuwal gained access to the complex.

INVASION OF SENATE PRESIDENT, HIS DEPUTY’S RESIDENCES

In 2018, security operatives were used to intimidate the legislative body, especially the senate, which had been termed by the government as its main opposition.

The first was that of operatives of the DSS storming the residence of Senate President Bukola Saraki to effect his arrest. The arrest warrant was issued by the Inspector General of Police on the basis that he had some questions to answer due to his alleged connection to the perpetrators of the Offa robbery that claimed the lives of residents.

On the same day, the house of his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, was barricaded by officials of the EFCC on the guise that he had some questions to answer on the case of money laundering.

While Saraki slipped through the arrest, his deputy was not so lucky.

The actions were believed to be a result of the planned defection of the Senate president with some other lawmakers.

Also, a siege was laid on the National Assembly complex by the DSS to prevent lawmakers from gaining access to their chambers in August. This followed the defection of the Senate president to the opposition party.

The aftermath led to the sack of the then-Director General of the DSS.

MACE THEFT

Still in 2018, the Senate was engulfed in drama when its mace was stolen by thugs who stormed the red chambers. While fingers were pointed at Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, who appeared in the chamber in the midst of his suspension, the Delta Central senator denied leading the thugs to the chamber to steal the mace.

According to the police, the mace was eventually found at the City Gate a day after it was stolen, and Omo-Agege was arrested for the theft. He was later released and would end up as the Deputy Senate President in the 9th Assembly.

ORUBEBE’S DISRUPTION OF 2015 ELECTION

The 2015 election that brought popular opposition figure Muhammadu Buhari to power remains one of the most intriguing in Nigeria’s history, especially at the anti-climax that was witnessed at the collation centre.

While the election was adjudged one of the best and the incumbent conceded defeat even before the official declaration of Buhari as the winner, a former minister of Niger Delta Affairs and representative of President Goodluck Jonathan, Godsday Orubebe, disrupted the collation while making some allegations against the then INEC chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, when the former realised his principal would lose the election.

While Jega kept his cool during the drama, the antics of Orubebe, expected to stop the final declaration, will forever be etched in the minds of Nigerians.

[DailyTrust]

More ministers yesterday took turns to give an account of their stewardship since their inauguration on August 21, last year.

 The ministers are  Festus Keyamo (Aviation and Aerospace Development), Abubakar Kyari, Agriculture and Food Security and Sabi Abdullahi, Agriculture and Food Security (state). 

 The event tagged Ministerial Sectoral Press Briefing is being coordinated by the Information and Culture Ministry as part of activities marking the one-year anniversary of the Bola Ahmed  Tinubu Administration. It started last week.

Keyamo revealed  plan by the Aviation ministry to power the nation’s international airports with solar.

He explained that when implemented, the N1 billion that the Federal Government spends monthly on diesel to provide light at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos alone would be saved.

Apart from announcing that the suspension of the controversial Air Nigeria project remained in force, Keyamo said that new master plans for the country’s airports and a review of the concession of four of them were likely.  

He said: “We are making conscious and gradual efforts towards embracing eco-friendly practices which is what the world is about now. Eco-friendly practices and green technologies in line with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standard on the long-term global aspiration goal of net-zero emissions in the aviation sector is what we are targeting.

…Organized Labour’s N497,000 demand unrealistic — Presidency
…Adds affordability key to arriving at any figure

President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Mr. Joe Ajaero, and Managing Director of Financial Derivatives Company, Mr. Bismarck Rewane, at this year’s annual Vanguard Economic Discourse, traded words over Organised Labour’s N615,000 minimum wage demand which has been reduced to N497,000.

While Mr Rewane contended that the minimum wage being demanded by Labour was not feasible, Ajaero insisted that the demand is in line with the socio-economic realities of Nigeria at the moment.

This came as the Presidency yesterday said the N497,000 demand by Labour as the new minimum wage was unrealistic and advised labour to be serious in its demand.

Speaking in his opening remarks at the summit, Ajaero, who was a panelist at the discourse, posited that the prices of most essential items and other services from transportation, and electricity to food had skyrocketed.

He said: “From all that we have been discussing here, there is a benchmark which is the dollar; a common factor we use. The cost of living index determines the wages, I want you to benchmark it with probably a bag of rice, which is about N84,000 today.

“I will equally want you to ask people that refill their gas cylinders how much it costs them, maybe N16,000 or N17,000, and it is once or twice in a month which is about N30,000 plus. I would equally want you to benchmark it to a plate of ‘Mama-put’ (Roadside food vendor) at N500 without meat.

“When you do that, with a family of six, you are going to get N270,000 in a month. We can go on and on. I want you to equally look at the United Nations, UN, provision that no human being should live on less than $2 per day.

“For a family of six, that will amount to $12. Multiply it and it gives you $360, then convert it with the current exchange rate.

“Ordinarily, I would have asked you to convert this money to dollars and you will see that it translates to about $20 and that is the least all over the world.

“Do you want labour to suggest that people should live on less than $1, not even $2 per day?

‘Living wage different from minimum wage’

If you match that with Mr President’s position that he is going to give Nigerians a living wage, and a living wage, in actual fact is different from a minimum wage.

“A living wage is that which will keep you and your family, at least, for you to eat till the end of the month. The fact that you have so much devalued your naira to the point that it doesn’t have weight gain should not make us not feed or go to work and not come back.

“No worker, including those in this hall today, goes to work and back without spending at least N2,000 a day. In a month, it is N60,000. Now check all these things and see whether a worker earning N615,000 in a month will have one naira in savings.

“We deliberately did not put communication. We deliberately did not put tithe, we assume that a worker does not have parents in our calculation. That is what brought us where we are today on the issue and on the premise that it creates inflation, I disagree with you because inflation is already here with us.

“It is a real wage that grows the economy because when workers earn, they purchase. When you increase the purchasing power of workers, the economy will grow and you have proper productivity.

“In Ghana, they review wages annually. If inflation is maybe three per cent, it is factored into it. Even in the United Kingdom, it is based on the level of inflation that they adjust wages. Yes, it is an index. If we have three per cent, it will be self-adjusted for that year.

“Even if you give us N615,000 for the next five years, it will be meaningless because if you are one of the people who prescribed this, it is weighing heavily on us.”

During the panel discussion, the NLC President said: “We are talking about reserves. You cannot continue to talk about reserves when people are dying of poverty. What are you going to do with reserves? The purpose of any government is for the good of the people.

“Whether workers or ordinary citizens, if you are talking of reserves, saving money and economic policies that are forcing people into poverty, how do you reconcile it because one of the eight-point agenda of the President is to eradicate poverty?

‘’Again, by the time we came up with the issue of wage award for which they gave N35,000, an amount which is neither here nor there, we came up with some measures before the negotiation of minimum wage.
“We said can you adopt the Compressed Natural Gas, CNG, policy? The CNG issue came from us and we explained to them that the CNG option will help Nigeria and is eco-friendly.

In this option, if you are supposed to fill your car tank with N50,000 petrol, with N15,000, you will fill your tank if we apply CNG.

‘’If you do this, even with the cost of PMS then, the cost of transportation will go down and prices of other things will stop moving. However, the government preferred to have abortions before pregnancy.
“However, they said we prefer to deregulate and they removed the subsidy before looking at how to cushion the effect. One year later, that cushion has not come.

“We decided to adopt a palliative policy, that is what the government is in today. A government of palliatives, tell me of any other reform that is working. Even the palliatives they promised, they said it should be cash transfers to the most vulnerable. As of today, there has never been any cash transfer to anybody.

“You were talking of reserves; it looks like you are having a kind of situation where people are dying and you are keeping reserves. You did not mention the corruption figures in Nigeria in building reserves.

“Some of the reserves built in the past were looted. If you identify that point of having billions and billions being looted by people, you can’t build reserves in the face of corruption. It is not possible. That is one vital point. Now that oil prices are going up, you cannot continue to refine abroad. “The period you are supposed to make money for your growth from oil, you are just importing refined products because no refinery is working in Nigeria, nothing is functioning.

“It is like a theory of producing cassava in your farm and you sell cassava to buy an illegal product.
‘’Now, between the time this last subsidy was removed and now, is Nigeria not paying more money in subsidy? Now we have to face reality. For sloganeering, we have removed the subsidy, while we are paying more subsidy.

“We should tell ourselves the truth. You know, there is no need to talk about reserves when they are going to completely loot the reserves.

‘’We cannot quickly forget the Justice Okigbo commission report on $12.4 billion missing oil windfall and whatnot. In this country, even when they take a loan, the loan disappears. Why can’t we come out openly and discuss our problem? And look at the hitches which corruption is causing to proffer solutions.”

Rewane contends

On his part, Mr Rewane, also a panellist at the event, said: “In 2019, the original proposal we met when former President Mohammad Buhari called us, I could recall, was N18,000, and the discussion was around N24,000. I think we moved it to N30,000 after all negotiations.

“When we came up, he said, I don’t want any layoffs, I don’t want any inflation, I don’t want this, I don’t want that. But what do you want? That was not there.

‘’In any case, we were able to resolve the issue. The data is very clear. What we did, N30,000 was the minimum wage, which covers 10 per cent more than N30,000 that the civil servants got.

“The equivalent at that time was about $75. So, for any other person, if you are on N18,000, you get N30,000. If you are a permanent secretary, whatever it is, you get N10,000 more.

And the data is here, inflation in 2019 was 11.4 per cent. Inflation in 2020, the year after, came down to six per cent.

‘’So, you can see that even though there was a wage review, which went from N18,000 to N30,000, inflation actually declined to six per cent. So, it was well managed, anticipated, and the discussion was very thorough and it happened in the month of the election. The president signed on April 18th.

“If you now dollarise the minimum wage, because the inflation has already been factored in the exchange rate, you dollarise the income. If you use the dollar value, you must also then use U.S. inflation. You cannot use the dollar value and then use the Nigeria inflation because that means that I am paying you in dollars.

“You now use US inflation, which is at 3.4 per cent now, and you take all the weight out of it. Let us say the US inflation from 2019 to now went up to about 9 per cent. So let us say everything put together was 15 per cent. If you take the dollar value add 15 per cent to that, and then bring it back, you will find that there is enough room for you to come up with a midpoint.

“Speaking about minimum wage, productivity in the US and our productivity in Nigeria are two different things. That is one.

“Two, the national minimum wage is a law that affects both the private sector and the public sector. It is a policy; it is not the economic plan, not the public plan. Government’s contribution to the GDP is about 10 per cent.

“The private sector, the employers, also have to pay the minimum wage. They can only pay the minimum wage from the revenue they generate and you know the situation in this country. They do not want a situation which would lead to a recession.

“What I’m saying is that you negotiate the minimum wage, bearing in mind that it is not government and government workers. The private sector is also in.

“Look at the losses they have been declaring and these companies that are going to borrow money at higher interest rates are still going to pay higher minimum wage. We are very concerned about the growth of our investment.”

Labour’s N497,000 demand unrealistic — Presidency

Meanwhile, the Presidency has said the N497,000 demand by organized labour as the new minimum wage is unrealistic and advised labour to be serious in its demand.

It also said what should be paramount in arriving at a new minimum wage by the tripartite committee on the new minimum wage should be the availability of resources to pay whatever was agreed upon.

Speaking exclusively to Vanguard in an interview in Abuja yesterday, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, said governments at the federal and state levels, have a bloated workforce.

Fielding questions on whether the recent N497,000 wage demand by organized labour was outrageous, Onanuga said: “Well, it’s very simple. I think the demand is outrageous. If you ask Mr. Ajaero or our brother who is the President of the TUC, Osifo, how much they pay their drivers or their lowest-paid workers, how much do they pay their cleaners, can they pay them N500,000? Can they pay them N615,000? It’s unrealistic.

“We have a bloated civil service at all levels. The government is keeping them as a social service because it doesn’t have other jobs for them.

“The last time someone gave the census of federal civil servants, they are said to be about 50,000. I am not talking about the police, army or those employed by some agencies. I am talking about the hardcore civil servants.

“If you visit the federal secretariat, you will see them milling around. You do not expect much productivity from them. Yet these are people Ajaero wants the Federal Government to pay N615,000.

“At the moment, what government is spending on recurrent expenditure, is too high. I don’t foresee any government, federal, state or local government council, spending all its money just to pay workers.

“There are still self-employed people, people who are doing their businesses to whom the government has responsibility to do roads, provide healthcare, provide education and others. So, labour should be realistic.

“From what I have seen so far, they are unserious, and unrealistic with their outlandish demand. I know that what the President has been promising is not just a minimum wage but a living wage.

“It’s too early now to say this is what the government will agree to. They are still negotiating. In the coming weeks, they will agree on a figure and then announce it to the Nigerian people.

“Then we have to be worried whether the states have the earning power to pay whatever the minimum wage agreed on because some states found it difficult to pay the old minimum wage of N30,000.

“I read a few days ago that the Zamfara State government, which failed to pay the N30,000 current minimum wage, announced that they will pay. If some states have not paid the minimum wage announced by President Muhammadu Buhari five years ago, it is an indication that the states will also fail to pay the new minimum wage. So labour needs to be realistic.

“In my view, I think what labour should be talking about is how to make affordable housing available, how to reduce transport costs, how to make food cheap and affordable to our people because by the time you spend less money on food, less money on transport, education and other things, the earning power will improve.

“I don’t believe in the quantum of money, it will not solve the problem. We have seen all the wage Aincreases in the past. They ended up creating more frustration for the workers.”

Rejiging cabinet not on the table

Asked if President Bola Tinubu would rejig his cabinet as the government marks one year in office on May 29, he said such was not on the card currently.

He said: “I don’t have any information about that. The President, instead of approving a lavish anniversary, asked the ministers to go out and give their scorecards.

“Some of them have done so. We started on Thursday and Friday and we are taking more ministers on Monday. It will run until we exhaust all the major ministers who have stories to tell, who have scorecards to present.

“I am not aware whether the President is entertaining removing some ministers. Don’t forget, those ministers are not one year old, they came in I think late August and they have barely spent nine months or so in government. “The President would want to give them some time to show whether they are performing or not.”

Further asked about his assessment and whether the ministers had lived up to their responsibilities, Onanuga said a good number of the cabinet members had so far discharged their responsibilities creditably.

“Many of them have done wonderfully well. All of them cannot be on the same level. It depends on what you are doing in your ministry, the kind of subjects you are superintending and so on. But I can say many of them have done well, many of them have been eager to implement the President’s 8-Point Agenda as it relates to the work they are doing in their ministries. I can say many of them have done well,’’ he added.

Asked how much he would suggest as a fair minimum wage to workers, he insisted that should be based on the available resources to the government.

[Vanguard]