Kogi civil servants reject Governor Yahaya Bello's offer of between 25% and 30% of their salaries

KOGI State civil servants have rejected an offer from Governor Yahaya Bello to be paid between 25% and 30% of their salary arrears dismissing the gesture as derisory insisting that they be paid in full.

 

Like many of Nigeria's 36 states, Kogi owes its civil servants a backlog of salary arrears but in its case, the situation is particularly bad as they are owed about three years wages. Governor Bello is standing for re-election in November and is aware of the fact that the matter will become a key campaign issue, so has made his civil servants an offer.

 

However, the Joint Action Union of Local Government Workers in Kogi State has rejected the offer, insisting that its members be paid in full. The union, which consists of the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees, Nigeria Union of Teachers, Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria, Nigeria Union of Pensioners and the Non-Academic Staff Union, made this clear after a recent meeting in the capital Lokoja.

 

While expressing displeasure over the way local government workers were being treated by the government, the unions said the Kogi State government had failed to meet the demands of the workers despite receiving April and May allocations from the federal government. They urged the government to do the needful as workers at the grass roots had been facing untold hardship for several months.

 

They observed that in the past local government pensioners in Kogi State only received between 35% and 50% of their dies. A union spokesman said: “Workers in the local government were expecting something better compared to what they had been collecting in the past.”

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