Kogi East Elders Council (KEEC) has described the government of Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi state as an unmitigated disaster.
At a press conference in Abuja today, the Chairman of Kogi East Elders Council (KEEC), Senator (Dr.) Ahmadu Ali said the Kogi East Elders Council, in its attempt to give the young administration the benefit of the doubt, had restrained itself from taking a critical posture in the hope that the current leaders would retrace their steps and take the right path.
The press conference had in attendance eminent leaders from Kogi state; Air Vice Marshal Salihu Atawodi (rtd), Senator Ahmadu Ali, Arc. Gabriel Aduku and others.
THE FULL STATEMENT:
PRESS STATEMENT BY KOGI EAST ELDERS COUNCIL ON THE DEPLORABLE STATE OF KOGI STATE
HELD IN ABUJA, FCT ON NOVEMBER 16, 2017
Gentlemen of the Press,
Welcome,
Kogi East Elders Council (KEEC) is the apex socio-cultural body formed on the principles of equity, justice, fairplay and good governance in Kogi State. The Council has laboured behind the scene to ensure harmony among various political divides in the State, even across the three senatorial districts. Though it is not strictly a political organization, Council has consistently counseled those at the helm of affairs at both the state and federal levels, encouraging them to engage in measures that would lead to peace, harmony and the well-being of the people of the state. An example is our communique as published in The Graphics of February 9, 2016.
It is, therefore, with absolute distress that the Kogi East Elders’ Council has decided to go public on the deplorable and deteriorating condition of resources-rich Kogi State. In the last two years since Alhaji Yahaya Bello providentially took over the mantle of leadership as the Governor of the state, impulsive and ill-informed steps taken by the administration have left in their trail the sounds of wailing and lamentation in villages, towns and cities across the state. The Kogi East Elders Council, in its attempt to give the young administration the benefit of the doubt, had restrained itself from taking a critical posture, in the hope that the current leaders would retrace their steps and take the right path. However, our hopes that the government would take the right path was being dashed as the leadership is sinking deeper into errors, making a shipwreck of the opportunity given to this younger generation to steer the ship of Kogi State towards a greater future. Consequently, as at today, Kogi is in dangerous waters, rudderless and sailing wildly into difficult storms. That is why we, Kogi East Elders Council, have come out to address this press conference on the current situation in Kogi State and to advise the way forward.
STALEMATE IN KOGI STATE UNIVERSITY
The termination of the appointments of 135 academic staff of Kogi State University by the State Government was an evidence of its ignorance with regard to administration. The lecturers had embarked on a strike action for over a period of six months because of unpaid salaries. Instead of government to pay up what it owed the lecturers, it rather glossed over the issue and insisted that the academic staff sign attendance registers as evidence that they had acquiesced to government’s arm-twisting strategy of compelling them to return to work under duress. These lecturers, some of them professors and PhD holders, were sacked from the state’s university, at a time when many universities in the country are hunting for intellectuals to beef up their faculties. The state government’s action has a tendency to depreciate the academic standard of the university by a huge percentage.
In our attempt to salvage the situation, the Kogi East Elders Council had sent a delegation, led by a former Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Architect Gabriel Aduku, to the governor with the following suggestions in the form of a communiqué:
1. The KEEC frowns at the lingering crisis between the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Kogi State University Chapter and the Government of Kogi State
2. The Council believes that the termination of the appointment of 135 academic staff of the university is unhealthy and inimical to progress and orderly development of the institution.
3. The Council requests that the Kogi State Government review this action by granting an unconditional pardon to the affected staff as a demonstration of magnanimity in order to create conducive environment for teaching, learning and research.
4. The Council is of the opinion that the proscription of the Kogi State University chapter of ASUU was hasty as it would rather aggravate than solve the labour crisis and advises the Government to rescind its decision.
5. The Council expressed its fears that unless steps are urgently taken, the Kogi State University, Anyigba stands the risk of losing accreditation of many of its current academic programmes as well as the positions of the first among state universities and seventh overall during the 2011 institutional accreditation conducted by the National Universities Commission.
6. The Council calls for a speedy conclusion of the tortuous staff screening exercise that appears to be the longest in the history of this country. Consequently, many civil servants are owed salaries of one year and above in spite of several bailout funds received by Kogi State.
Instead of hearkening to this appeal and voice of reason by the Kogi East Elders’ Council, the state government rebuffed our moves, claiming self-righteousness and proclaiming that it is on a mission to sanitise the civil service.
INSECURITY IN KOGI STATE:
The state of insecurity in Kogi is unacceptable. It has culminated in a situation in which a labour leader, Mallam Abdulmumuni Yakubu, was reportedly killed in Okene on November 1, 2017. The evidence of the widespread insecurity was manifest in the imposition of 24-hour curfew on five local government areas by the state government on November 9, 2017. The LGAs include Adavi, Ajaokuta, Okene, Ogori/Magongo and Okehi. Thuggery and senseless killings are not the only definitions of insecurity in the state. There is kidnapping, armed robbery, conflicts between herders and farmers, leading to the loss of lives and properties. The crimes have continued to fester dangerously, while government beats its chest for fighting the menace through donations of vehicles and other facilities to the police. Crimes are defeated, not only with facilities, but through intelligence gathering from the communities. Moreover, some known criminals flaunt their invincibility before their hapless victims because they have been recruited into the political strategies for the next elections. We state unequivocally that this situation is unacceptable and cannot be allowed to persist. We call on the police and other security agencies in the state to put all hands on deck, oil their intelligence network, arrest these criminals and bring them to justice, no matter their political or ethnic affiliations. Without a secure atmosphere there can be no development in the state.
UNPAID CIVIL SERVANTS SALARIES AND RELATED CRISIS:
Sworn in on January 27, 2016, Governor Yahaya Bello noted in his inaugural speech that, “We know salaries have not been paid to some of our Civil Servants for some months now. We propose to commence paying as promptly as possible while implementing strategies to gradually defray the arrears. While doing this we shall count on the understanding of all the good people of Kogi State.”
Instead of fulfilling this promise, Governor Bello has been beclouded with the fixation that the civil service is mired in monumental corruption. He embarked on series of staff audits that saw to the non-payment of staff salaries for close to 21 months and counting. Over this period, Governor Bello claims to have uncovered 10,000 ghost workers, many of whom have cried out aloud that they are bona fide civil servants of Kogi State, not ghosts. It is becoming increasingly evident that the ghost workers narrative is exaggerated and at best false. Rather, it is an unqualified excuse to downsize the Kogi State civil service workforce without justification. The never-ending staff audit has pauperized civil servants, leading to frustrations, deaths and suicides.
Recently, 40 senators had to donate 1,260 bags of rice to Kogi State civil servants in order to ameliorate the hunger and starvation that the obnoxious staff audit brought upon the people of the state. At the last count, five different committees had been set up with regard to the exercise:
1. Screening committee chaired by General Paul Okutinmo
2. Screening committee headed by Dr J Agbaji
3. Back-up committee chaired by the Auditor-General of Kogi State, Mr. Y. Okala
4. Validation Committee headed by the same Auditor-General of Kogi State, Mr Y. Okala
5. Appeal Committee also headed by the Auditor-General of Kogi State, Mr Y. Okala
6. Verification exercise now on-going.
The staff audit or verification could, in this way, continue for eternity, and so the suffering of the civil servants in the state. As at today, open sources provide the following data with regard to the state’s work force:
SUMMARY OF KOGI STATE WORK FORCE AS AT SEPTEMBER 30, 2017
S/No Categories Number
1. Work force as at January 2016 (when Governor Yahaya took over) 76,275
2. Staff cleared by verification/appeal committees 65,832
3. Uncleared Staff 10,443
4. Outstanding Salaries Between 2 and 18 months
5. Some Uncleared Staff have been pardoned No available figure
The ugly atmosphere has not been lifted after almost two years of the screening exercise, and culminating in the slavish management policy of clocking in and out of staff at various Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), as a means of monitoring staff attendance. Seen as a measure that runs contrary to current labour laws, in an atmosphere of non-payment of salaries, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Kogi State chapter, embarked on an indefinite strike action, since September 21, 2017, which was called off only last weekend, November 10, 2017. While the strike lasted, most government offices in Kogi State were under lock and key, as workers defied the brutish but fruitless measures of using security outfits to break open office doors. Though the workers have called off the long strike, the terms and conditions of the rapprochement should be adhered to by government, as any act of betrayal of trust, especially on the part of government, could bruise the unhealed wounds and engender another bout of conflict and confrontation with Labour.
However, we consider it ironic that the government is feigning the lack of resources to pay civil servants and pensioners their emoluments in spite of the huge funds that accrued to the state and local governments from the federation account and internally generated revenues since 2016. Our findings have shown the following inflow of cash into the coffers of Kogi State government since 2016.
1. FAAC Allocations to the State 60, 500,000,000.00
2. FAAC Allocations (LGAs) 49, 300,000,000.00
3. FG bailout 20, 000,000,000.00
4. Paris Club Refund (1st & 2nd tranches) 17, 200,000,000.00
5. Internally Generated Revenue (estimated as at September 30, 2017) 20, 000,000,000.00
Total – N167, 000,000,000.00
From the above figures it is apparent that the average monthly inflow or receipts of funds by the Kogi State Government for 21 months is, on the average, N8 billion. In terms of expenditure, below is an outline of civil servants and pensioners salaries and emoluments between 2012 and 2015 before Governor Bello took over:
1. State workers’ salaries/pensions 2, 600,000,000.00
2. LGAs Staff Salaries/Pensions 847,800,000.00
3. LGAs Teachers’ Salaries/pensions 1, 300,000,000.00
Total – N4, 747,800,000.00
The average monthly emolument to workers in Kogi State before Governor Bello’s tenure (including those of the so-called ghost workers) was of N4.8 billion. At present, the excess after wage bill is put at N3.2 billion, therefore, the total surplus that has accumulated from January 2016 to September 2017 is N67 billion. This amount should be available for infrastructure development, but the projects which might have gulped this sum are not on ground for the people of Kogi State to see. If the government is not engaged in the construction of vital infrastructure in the state, why has government been unable to pay the salaries of even the ‘cleared civil servants’ as at when due? Why did the state government embark on a borrowing adventure from commercial banks, and what has government used the borrowed money to service? The government wasted millions of naira on newspaper advertisements to showcase the number of employees who have been cleared and paid, but it shamelessly admitted that in spite of the funds accruing to the state, government still owed the salaries of some ‘cleared workers.’
It is nothing short of wickedness for the Kogi State government to deny workers their salaries and pensioners’ stipends in the face of such abundant financial resources. The excuse of refining the civil service system or of running a digital administration does not hold water, as every improvement on an administrative system is supposed to produce a positive result, not a negative one that leaves the people in anguish and penury. The condition of Kogi State has degenerated to a situation in which federal lawmakers had to donate bags of rice to Kogi State workers, when the state government has stuffed workers’ earned salaries under its armpit.
We wish to reiterate the fact that the situation in Kogi State is totally unacceptable to Kogi East Elders Council. Therefore, we declare our positions on the various contending issues as follows:
1. His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, should intervene in the crises in Kogi State by setting up a presidential committee to investigate the purported staff audit and ensure that staff salaries are paid.
2. The Federal Government should investigate how the funds that went to Kogi State as bailout and Paris Club refunds have been utilized, to the point that the president’s directive that civil servants’ salaries should be given priority in the disbursement of the funds was not adhered to.
3. All trade unions in Kogi State’s tertiary institutions should be allowed to operate undeterred. The proscription of these unions by the state government was not in good faith, and has worsened the teaching and learning conditions in tertiary institutions in the state.
4. The State Government should immediately pay up all salaries and emoluments due to the state’s civil servants and pensioners, because there should be enough money in its coffers to do so.
5. The staff audit should be brought to a logical conclusion immediately or halted, so that it is not used as an excuse for non-payment of staff salaries.
6. All the 135 academic staff members of Kogi State University who have been sacked under the draconian policy of the state government should have the termination of their appointments reversed unconditionally.
7. Kogi State Government should keep to all the terms and conditions of agreements reached with trade unions in the state to ensure industrial harmony.
It is worth putting on record that Kogi State belongs to over three million people who hail from the Confluence State and not the few persons who hold political offices in various capacities today. Every indigene of the state is interested in lifting it from its parlous state to the height of progress and prosperity. Therefore, the state government should consider critical voices as partners in progress, not enemies. It is imperative for this government to run an all-inclusive administration as that is the better way in which the state can move forward.
Thank you.
