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A veteran journalist and former general manager of Kogi Broadcasting Corporation, Late Alhaji Abu Onaji, was hoping to be screened and got paid after 14months of staying without payment of his pension.
He was declared as uncleared pensioner because the letter of confirmation of his appointment was said not to have been located in his file, when he appeared before the workers’ screening committee constituted by the present government in kogi state. Pronto, he left for Benue state where he was employed years back to search for the said document. And after days of fruitful search in Makurdi, he got the required document and dashed back to base (Lokoja) to submit it, and to be cleared as a genuine pensioner. Little did he know that providence will not agree with him.
He had entered Lokoja with enthusiasm, telling colleagues a day to his demise that this would be the last screening he will observe, saying, “after meritorious service in old Benue and Kogi state, is it how they will pay me back?”
He retired to bed on that fateful night and never woke up. He transited to eternity in the night and failed to keep a date with the committee. His liveless body was seen on his bed with his credentials neatly packed in a bag beside him on friday morning. His wife was also said to have died in a similar circumstance last year. She was said to be a hypertensive patient and owed 7 months salary as at the time she died.
A family source posited that complication, resulting from a hidden terminal illness which the couple could not handle on time due to weak monetary status, occasioned by non payment of salary and pension was responsible for her death.
In a related issue, a female civil servant that was hypertensive patient with Hospital Management Board, fondly called as Bose (not real name) was also said to have died because she could not raise the sum of N300 to buy an inhaler (when the one in use got finished), as she was not paid for months.
As the uproar generated by the death of this great broadcaster was about settling down, the pension department of Adavi Local government Area of the state came up with the ugly news that the body has lost 51 of their members between October and early March this year, due to non payment of their pension over issues bothering on the workers screening exercise which was initiated by the Alhaji Yahaya Bello-led administration in the state.
These instances were just tip of an iceberg as many civil servants and pensioners, including their dependants were dying in droves almost everyday for non payments of their salary and pension and other emoluments. Infact, it is no longer news in Kogi that someone went to bed, but never wake up the following day.
Besides this ‘sleep -and not -wake -kind of death’, many workers were kidnapped and some died by road accidents in their quest to observe the said census program.
These ugly incidents occasioned by non payment of salary and endless workers counting have sown the seed of resentment, anger and hatred in the land. particularly against the Bello led admnistration. It was gathered that many have taken solace in spiritual homes, churches, mosques and shrines to help them out, even as others were just raining curses every day on the person of Alhaji Bello Yahaya for their predicament.
In short, if there is a governor that is heavily cursed everyday by his people in this country, is Yahaya Bello.
The story of a retired permanent secretary that was owed 13months pension and who kept calling “Bello, Bello, Bello….” until he breath his last from a complication that money would have sorted it out in early February in
200 housing estate in Lokoja is still fresh and punching, the psych of the people.
Presently, many have taken it as a state ‘where anything goes and everything happens’. Another trouble spot for the administration is the high rate of crime wave in the state. Robbery and kidnapping in Kogi state go hand in hand. Every part of the state is affected.
– Austin Usman Okai
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