Former
President Olusegun Obasanjo on Thursday in Ibadan said that the bogus earnings
of National Assembly members portrayed them as a “bunch of unarmed robbers.”
Obasanjo,
spoke at a public presentation of a book written by Prof. Mark Nwagwu,
titled, ‘I am Kagara, I Weave the Sands of Sahara,’ in
Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
He
also called on the Federal Government to respect the agreement it signed with
the Academic Staff Union of Universities, saying that the Federal Government
put itself in a corner by entering into the agreement without full
consultation.
He
said, “Government allows itself to be stampeded into signing agreement particularly
when one group or the other withdraws it services and goes on strike. After the
agreement has been signed, without full consultation within government,
implementation becomes an issue.
“But
an agreement is an agreement whoever the agent is that signed that agreement on
your behalf, you are bound by it. You may now have to renegotiate to have a new
agreement but the agreement earlier signed remains an agreement.
“When
the university teachers go on strike, there is an agreement; and when doctors go
on strike, there will be a special agreement. And when the universities
teachers see that the agreement reached with the doctors is different from
theirs, they go on strike and this is bad for our economy.
“The
way we are going about spending all our revenue to pay overheads, we will not
develop. And we will have ourselves to blame. Ninety per cent of revenue is
used to pay overheads, allowances, salaries and not much is left for capital
development. In a situation like that, we have to rethink.
“It
is even worse for the National Assembly. They will abuse me again but I will
never stop talking about them. They are a bunch of unarmed robbers.
“They
are one of the highest paid in the world where we have 75 per cent of our
people living in abject poverty. They will abuse me tomorrow and if they don’t,
maybe they are sleeping. The behaviour and character of the National Assembly
should be condemned and roundly condemned.”
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