By Mumini AbdulKareem
A Professor of Economics, University of Ilorin, Israel Olufemi Taiwo, has revealed that the government of Ghana adjusted wages close to twenty times in eighteen months around 1993-94 while he was working in the West African country.
He made this known while delivering the one hundredth and ninety-fourth inaugural lecture of the University of Ilorin on Thursday held at the school auditorium on Thursday.
He therefore advised that the country should develop a mechanism for adjustment of the minimum wage based on a weighted average of the cost of living and labour productivity to make the process more transparent.
Taiwo spoke on the topic “Economic Policy Research for Nigeria: A Perspective”.
According to him, “While I was in Ghana around 1993-94, my salary was adjusted for 20 times for the duration of eighteen months. I still have the records with me”, he added.
He therefore urged government to look in the direction of relatively small but regular increment of the national minimum wage against large but infrequent adjustment to minimise distortions to the economy.
While calling on the government to cut the monetary policy rate to a single digit, the university don said government should ensure that external public debt are mostly deployed for economic purposes and at a concessional interest rate.
Other recommendations that were proffered by Prof Taiwo include “formulation and implementation of science, technology and innovation policies for creating an innovation-driven and knowledge-based economy, the country should earmark through planning and appropriation act, a minimum of 2-3 percent of the GDP for research and development, prompt review of national policy on education to enable the country’s development strategy and adoption of an expedition model at the federal level to collaborate with the state governments for the provision of basic services at the sub-national levels.
“A situation where the federal government and state government governments will be embarking on provision of boreholes at the same time should not be the case when things are properly structured”, he noted.
On tax policies, he noted that Nigeria “Should gradually migrate from the schedular tax system to the global one to ensure equal treatment of a taxpayer’s income from all sources in line with international best practices and also institute a progressive global tax system that will ensure the wealthy are taxed appropriately.
He also campaigned for the redistribution of the country’s income and wealth more effectively through targeted government spending among others.
He however said several risks could undermined these proposed reforms including the value systems, resistance, insecurity, political landscape and gaps in national integration adding that such risks could b mitigated by concerted efforts of all stakeholders including development partners.
