Aregbesola Government is Callous
and Irresponsible
Press Statement
The Socialist Party of Nigeria
(SPN), Osun State Chapter strongly decries the refusal of the RaufAregbesola-led
Osun State government to pay salaries of workers for three months. We also
condemn non-payment of pension arrears and monthly pension to retirees in the
state. We consider it callous and irresponsible the denial of workers of their
salaries and entitlement, using very fraudulent excuse. We call on the
leadership of labour movement in the state including Nigeria Labour Congress
(NLC) and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) to take drastic and practical
action to defend the right of workers. We call for immediate declaration of
industrial actions including strikes, pickets, mass rallies and protests, to
demand for payment of workers’ salaries and pensions.
It is highly treacherous and
shameful of the Aregbesola government to claim there is no money to pay workers
for over 90 days, yet the same government has millions to spend on campaign
jamboree. We ask; where is the N30 billion the government claimed to have saved
some time ago. Is the government claiming it is not getting any federal
allocation or what? The Aregbesola government should be ashamed that more than
four years of the much-touted economic prudency it still relies on dole out
from Abuja to survive. Even at this, the government cannot meet its basic
obligations and duties, one of which is payment of workers’ salaries and
retirees’ pension.
Just recently, teachers in the state’s public
schools embarked on a month-long strike to demand for provision of running
grants to public schools for procurement of basic instructional materials like chalk!
Currently, lecturers in the four state owned Polytechnics and Colleges of Education
are on industrial dispute with the state government over backlog of allowances
and other emoluments. Workers in the state-owned university, Osun State
University (UNIOSUN) are at loggerhead with the state government over poor
funding of the institution. Workers in the state radio and television stations
just called off their strike some few weeks ago, over failure of government to
pay their backlogs of arrears. Worse still, none of these issues have been
addressed or resolved by the government!
This clearly corroborates the
position of the SPN that the Aregbesola government has bankrupted the state
finance, no thanks to its pro-capitalist, pro-big business policies. It is
clear that the state government has mortgaged the finance of the state to big
time contractors, politicians and financial sharks. Currently, the state is
virtually at a standstill in terms of governance. Various projects, including
the few road projects and school rehabilitations have been abandoned despite
billions of naira of loan procured for them. Public institutions like schools
and hospitals are in deplorable state. Is it then accidental that Osun State
came distant twenty-second (22nd) in the 20014 WAEC SSCE rating. Clearly, the
Osun State government is short-sighted in its approach to finances of the
State. The government is only interested in projects and activities that will
put public funds into private businesses of politicians and their big business
partners, as seen in the School Uniform Fraud, where government gave almost one
billion naira of public fund to private firm to solely produce and sell school
uniforms, albeit of low quality, to pupils and students in the state.
While we agree that, as a result of
the neo-colonial and rent-seeking character of Nigeria’s ruling politicians,
both in the PDP and APC, the revenue of the country has greatly reduced due to
fall in crude oil price in the international market, we make bold to say this
has only shown the bankrupt nature of Aregbesola government, rather than
absolving it of blame in the economic woes that has betide the state, nay the
country. We challenge Aregbesola government to come out with the financial
report of the state vis-à-vis the revenue of the state, the federal allocation,
and expenditure of the state, and we will show how the Aregbesola government
had massively defrauded the state.
We call on workers not to be
hoodwinked by the bogey of poor allocation or financial victimization of the
state by the federal government, as being bandied by the government and its
town-criers. Workers must demand for their right to adequate and timely
remuneration. Leadership of labour unions should be proactive in the defence of
their members’ interests. We find it absolutely wrong for labour leaders to
feel unburdened in a situation where its members have not collected salaries
for months. We call on labour leaders in the state, especially
NLC and TUC to declare a 48-hour warning strike with mass rallies and protests
across the state to demand immediate payment of workers’ salary arrears, and
accumulated pensions and gratuities. An immediate congress of workers in the
state should be the first step in this direction. We call on workers in each
union to put pressure in their leadership to take industrial and mass actions
on the issue immediately.
Kola Ibrahim
State Secretary
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