Yekini Jimoh in Lokoja
Kogi State Governor, Mr. Yahaya Bello and the People Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday disagreed that the state government had failed to pay its public servants salaries for 38 months.
In a statement by its Publicity Secretary, Mr. Bode Ogunmola, the PDP urged the state’s public servants not to be deceived by Bello’s crocodile tears and apology after he admitted owing 38 months salaries only to turn around attributing it to youthful exuberance.
The PDP, also, urged the public servants not to accept the plea of Chief Edward Onoja, noting that all he ended up doing at the NLC meeting was “to market a bad product to a people wounded and injured by Bello’s administration.
”Kogi public servants are wiser now and once beaten twice shy. The time of reckoning has come. Thuggery will not pay you this time around. You are a bad product that is dead on arrival.”
He, therefore, described Onoja, as not a sincere marketer, marketing a bad product that would not sell, thereby asking Onoja to tell his boss to prepare his hand over note.
In a statement Bello’s Chief of Staff, Onoja issued yesterday, the Kogi State Government denied owning public servants 38-month salaries.
He said the state government did not owe any genuine civil servants in the state such amount of salary arrears, adding that most of the persons raising false allegation were civil servants that were affected during the screening exercise due to certain anomalies.
Onoja accused the media of constituting a major national problem which required immediate check as the infiltration of falsehood and propaganda was becoming alarming.
He said during the civil service screening exercise in the first year of the Bello administration, about 10,000 civil servants were found wanting, falling under categories ranging from age falsification, certificate forgery among other criminal issues legally requiring, dismissal, imprisonment among other punitive measures.
He said due to Bello’s magnanimity, many were pardoned and some sort of soft landing were offered, an action by the State government that was now being taken for granted.
