By Raphael Ekpang
The Senator representing Ebonyi North in the 10th Senate, Peter Nwebonyi has said that Nigerian Senate under the leadership of Godswill Akpabio is more united than ever.
The Senate Deputy Whip, Nwebonyi who spoke to a selected journalists in Abuja on Tuesday while appraising the achievement of the 10th Senate under Akpabio’s leadership stated that the two terms former governor of Akwa Ibom State and a former Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Godswill Akpabio has suceeded in uniting the Senators the more despite the various camps preceding the principal officers’ elections in June 13, 2023.
According to him, “I must tell you its been wonderful under the leadership of our able President His Excellency Godswill Akpabio who is also the chairman of the 10th national assembly. Like he is known as an uncommon transformer, he has actually proved that in all ramifications; in terms of bringing all the senators together, in terms of carrying all the Senators along, in terms of been a father to all the senators. There is one good thing he possess which is very rare in our contemporaries, modern leaders, he has no iota of hard handedness in him.
“Akpabio does not care where you are coming from, who you are or the party you belong to, but rather what you can offer, that is why some of us even as first timers we were given position of principal officers in the Senate. That is why in his entourage anytime, anyday and anywhere you will always see Senators from different political parties with him, of course it shows that he is a de-tribalise person.”
Nwebonyi noted that the problem of Nigeria outside corruption is nepotism, religious bigotry and so on, but Akpabio through his leadership has shown that Nigeria has gone beyond shared sentiment, saying that it is hard time we unite together to achieve the purpose of God for us.
However, the federal lawmaker has challenged Nigerians youth to put on their thinking caps because white cola jobs are nowhere to be found therefore, they can only survive if they take the alternative route by way of being creative, hustling and by engaging in self employed jobs
He narrated how he survived after his late father died while he was in primary three. And he said, it took his mother and his determination to become who he is today because he never depended on anybody except the work of his hands.
He said, “Let me use this medium to advise Nigerian youths, nothing good comes easy, you must pay a prize for you to be great, don’t wait for government to make you great, or make your children great, you can achieve it, if I did it and I am a senator today, you can also do it even better.
On the minimum wage, he explained that the 10th Senate is strongly behind the struggle of the organised labour because with the current realities in the country sixty two thousand naira (N62,000) salary can’t buy anything in the market, that is why they are appealing to the executive to look onto the plights of the Nigerian workers and increase their minimum wage upward again.
“We are standing by the labour, the prices of goods in the market has triples as such N62,000 cannot buy any reasonable thing in the market again, as a person for a long time non of my staff received less than one hundred thousand naira (N100,000) as salary because I am reasonable.”
However, Nwebonyi discarded insinuations maki