The newly appointed Special Adviser on Skill Acquisition to Governor Bassey Otu of Cross River state, Chief Ray Ugba Morphy, has said he will not be receiving salaries throughout the duration of the appointment.
He has, however, informed the governor that he will drive his new role without collecting any salary or emoluments from the state government.
According to him, the appointment is an opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the development of Cross River State.
Reacting to his appointment through a statement on Friday, Chief Ray Morphy, who resigned from former Governor Ben Ayade’s administration in 2016 as a Special Adviser on Strategy and National Contact to the Governor, said many states in Nigeria will have to adopt the Cross River State model in skill acquisition in near feature.
He said: “As a senior citizen of the state, consistently committed to progress of our beloved state, I put it on public record that I will function in this capacity to the best of my ability as a service to our people, therefore, I will work.
“At this juncture of my life, I believe the renewal of Cross River and its upliftment should be the primary duty of all. I consider this appointment a call to service, not a call to feed on the lean resources of the state.
“I took the job as a volunteer because where we are now as a nation all hands must be on deck.
“By my age, by experience and exposure I am way far from it but I did not look at all that but as an opportunity to assist the redemption of my state after the mismanagement of the state by the immidiate-past administration.
“It is important at this point in time, like Kennedy said: “Do not ask for what the nation can do for you rather ask what you can do for the nation.” Likewise I do not ask what the Cross River can do for me but what I can do for the Cross River state.
“Governor Otu, so far, is on the right track and he has assured me that Skill Acquisition will be a major plank of his administration,” the public analyst said
Speaking on the importance of skill acquisition to the development of the state and Nigeria as a whole, the Cross River politician said: “Practically, skill acquisition is the way to go. Anybody who understands what is wrong with the country today, the crisis of unemployment, the crisis of under employment, will understand that the major cause of all these is inadequate preparation for the market place or inadequate preparation of our young persons for employment, for absorption in the industry.
“So any government, like the government of Cross River who is interested in doing the right this, the most appropriate this to do is to focus on skill acquisition, and that is what brought India out of what it was, that is what is bringing a lot of African countries; Togo particularly, to some extend Ghana, its earning them money. If you look at the statistics from India, the highest earner in Idia is the repartition of wages by Indians who are working abroad. So that’s our model to make Cross River better and I think that model should be adopted by other states as we go along.”
Ray Morphy is the son of the late iconic I. I. Morphy, a traditional chief, foremost nationalist and patriot who until his death was the political leader of Cross River North.