Newly elected National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Barrister Sylvester Ezeokenwa, has aid he would not be receiving salaries in his new position.
In a chat with reporters in Abuja on Thursday, Ezeokenwa, who took over from Dr Victor Ike Oye, and was until his emergence Commissioner for Special Duties under Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State, said he would not take salaries due to the promise of the party leadership to key into the demand of Nigerian youths for transformation and generational change.
Ezeokenwa emerged in Awka, the Anambra State capital, during the party’s elective national convention, where other 30 national working committee (NWC) members were also elected, for the next four years, and the Board of Trustees (BoT) reconstituted.
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“As part of rebranding of APGA, the office of the APGA National Chairman is not a salary paying employment, neither is it a full-time job. I am legal practitioner and I have my office and I intend to continue to practice, even as a national chairman of APGA because we must send a message out there that the fact that you are occupying so and so office is not enough.
“People must see that you are setting that example. If I do nothing on my career, how would I take care of my family and the education of my children? So I am a lawyer and would practice my profession,” he said
Subsidy removal
Speaking on the subsidy removal, he said the party was in support of the removal but it believes there has to be some key enablers to alleviate the suffering of the masses.
“These (enablers) were not there before the announcement (by President Bola Tinubu) was made. I believe it is wrong to hold the masses responsible for the mismanagement of the nation’s scarce resources and bad leadership that we witnessed,” Ezeokenwa said.
He said that there was nothing the masses were benefitting from government apart from fuel subsidy and withdrawing it without putting alternative in place for the masses is crass insensitivity.
“We are calling on President of Federal Republic of Nigeria to look into the welfare of Nigerians as much as possible,” he said.