*Councils now redundant, comatose
*Arrears of salaries accumulate
*NULGE politicized, helpless
By Ken Edokpayi, Prince Sollo Az’ke & Julius Ajayi
The Navigator Newspaper
The
Edo State governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, has been accused of
allegedly crippling the financial standings of the eighteen local
government councils across the state with his continuous tampering with
monthly financial allocations made to the third tier governments from
the Federation Account.
Sources close to local government authorities in several local councils across the state, who spoke with The Navigator in
hush tunes, last week, revealed that since the illegal constitution of
the local government caretaker committees in 2010, the governor had been
making deductions from council resources, leaving them with so much
that could enable them pay salaries. But, according to one of the
sources, “the reality of the situation is that a majority of the
councils cannot even pay staff salaries, allowances and office running
imprests from what is eventually given to them by the state government.”
The
visible implications of this unexplained deductions by the state
government from council allocations, according to another source, who
pleaded anonymity “is that workers are owed backlog of salaries. In
some councils, like Oredo, Egor and Ikpoba-Okha, workers are owed two,
three months salary arrears. It really had never been this bad.” The
source maintained that people were only more worried about payment of
workers’ salaries because it concerned their welfare and that of their
families and dependents.
“However,”
he noted, “the reason for the constitution, adoption and operation of
the third tier government at the local government level in Nigeria, was
to bring government and effective governance closer to the people in the
grassroots. That means to make health services closer to the people;
to make water, electricity and other social amenities available for use
for the rural dwellers; to provide adequate security; to contribute its
quota to youth development and women empowerment; to make educational
needs available to the people; to make other socio-economic services
available at the local government level; to touch the lives of the
people and create positive impacts of government policies in the lives
of the people. These are some of the endearing objectives of local
government councils and the beautiful dreams dreamt by the proponents of
the local government system of governance.
“But,
today, with all these illegal deductions, even to pay salaries and
allowances to workers, is not regularly possible. This time around, the
simple task of evacuating refuse from markets and other public places
is no longer possible because funds are in short supply. This attitude
is truly running councils aground. This is a gross violation and
bastardization of the local government system; and most especially, the
rural dwellers are continuously deprived and raped of their entrenched
rights and privileges supposedly incorporated into local government
administration.
“Yet,
almost everyone has folded his hands, watching helplessly as the state
government makes mince-meat of our collective destiny. For me, the
greatest culprits are those in the House of Assembly. I don’t want to
believe we have a State House of Assembly, comprising supposed
representatives of the people. Either out of fear or outright,
institutional cowardice, they have allowed the governor to continue to
run rings around us all and trample on our own rights, including most
pitiably, their own rights as a legislative body. This is ridiculous.”
In Edo Central senatorial district, The Navigator visited
Esan West, Esan North East, Esan South-East, Esan Central and Igueben
local government councils and discovered that the stories were almost
the same about unpaid salaries arrears, leave bonus and other
allowances. In Esan West local government council, where sources
confirmed workers were owed three months salary arrears, the
Vice-Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees, NULGE,
Mrs. L. Akhimien maintained that they had had to call off the planned
workers’ strike to protest the non-payment of their salaries after the
Council’s Head of Service assured them that steps had been taken to pay
the workers by September ending.
While
agreeing that some undisclosed amount of money was regularly deducted
at source from the council’s allocation, she, however, refused to
disclose how much was deducted or from what source it was deducted. The
NULGE vice-chairman, however, warned that failure of the council’s
management to pay the workers’ salaries as promised by September ending,
would be met with workers’ protest and strike.
In Ubiaja, the administrative headquarters of Esan South East, some of the workers confirmed to The Navigator that
their salaries had been paid, even as they lamented the non-payment of
their Leave Bonuses, which they maintained had been “piling up.” The
workers comments took a new turn when some of them in separate chats
with The Navigator noted
that they had not been paid, remarking that “those who claim to have
been paid are die-hard members of the ACN or Oshiomhole’s apologists.”
At
the Igueben local government council, some of the workers were seen
under a regularly frequented Tree in the compound, which they call “The
Parliament,” discussing the hardship brought upon them by the
non-payment of their full salaries, although some “party faithful”
agreed that they had been paid. There neither were NULGE officials nor
the Transition Committee members in their offices at the time The Navigator visited.
The Esan North East secretariat Uromi was almost deserted at the time The Navigator visited,
with only a handful of workers within the premises. The Transition
Committee chairman was not in the office, just like the executive
members of the Local government council’s NULGE were out of the
premises. However, workers who volunteered information to The Navigator,
maintained that they had not been paid their salaries “for months,”
insisting that the political dust raised as a result of the July 14,
2012 gubernatorial election, had refused to settle as far as the
council’s activities were concerned.
The Navigator’s investigations
revealed that both the workers, in their individual capacities and the
NULGE, as a union, had been polarized by political intrigues, which has
resulted in an unsettled atmosphere in the various councils. The way
the issue stands, the workers might not be able to collectively fight
neither the illegal deductions, nor take too far, the raging issue of
the growing arrears of unpaid salaries.
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