By Victor Ogunje in Ado Ekiti
The Ekiti State government has started moves to sack over 2,000 workers alleged to have been illegally employed during the administration of Mr Ayodele Fayose.
The affected workers include the 2,000 workers employed after the July 14, 2018 governorship election won by Governor Kayode Fayemi.
The Commissioner for Information, Mr Muyiwa Olumilua, who spoke in Ado Ekiti on Thursday after the weekly state executive meeting, said the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) then warned against illegal recruitment and urged job seekers to shun last minute moves made by Fayose to employ people into the state’s civil service.
Olumilua added that the decision to sack those he described as illegal staff was arrived at after perusing the reports of a panel set up to review employments into the state civil service in the last four years.
Olumilua said: “Governor Fayemi has directed the Head of Service, Mr Ayodeji Ajayi, to collate all available vacancies in the civil service, with the overhead implications, to enable the state government prepare to recruit suitable and qualified Ekiti citizens into the public service, irrespective of the party affiliations.
“The officers reinstated into the Local Government Service Commission between October 16th 2014, and October 15th 2018, are to be reabsorbed by the relevant personnel boards and migrated to biometric payroll with immediate effect.
“All 272 officers employed by the Governor Fayose administration, who are still on manual payroll, shall be considered for absorption into the civil service but on case-by-case basis. Absorption will be conditional on availability of vacancies.
“The 169 officers recruited in 2014 but had their appointments terminated by the Governor Fayose administration, shall be considered for reabsorption by the Ekiti State House of Assembly Service Commission, but on a case-by-case basis. Reabsorption will be conditional on availability of vacancies in their previous offices of appointment.
“Officers dismissed between October 16th, 2014 and October 15th 2018 in the following ministries should go to the office of establishment to ascertain their current status.
“All appointments made after the gubernatorial election of July 2018, an exercise found to have violated due process, are hereby cancelled and declared null and void.
“All affected persons are advised to participate in the next recruitment exercise to be announced in due course.”
Fayose, who reacted to the proposed sack, described the action as the height of wickedness and political vendetta promoted to the peak.
Fayose’s spokesperson, Lere Olayinka, in a statement on Wednesday, said: “Fayemi has only succeeded in writing his name in the history books of Ekiti as one who inflict pains and sorrow on the people.
“Fayemi has only demonstrated the wickedness in his heart by sacking Ekiti sons and daughters who were duly employed by the state government.
“It will be on record that the PDP government of Ayodele Fayose gave jobs to over 2,000 unemployed youths in Ekiti while the APC government of Kayode Fayemi sacked them.”
The Chairman of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Sola Adigun, appealed to government not to use the error and mistake of the past government to mete out punishment to innocent workers.
“This is not a right, but a plea to the government to allow them to remain in the system. We are going to see Governor Fayemi and Head of Service, Ayodeji Ajayi, to please stop this recurrent issue of government sacking those employed by their predecessors,” Adigun said.
The state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in a statement by the state Publicity Secretary, Mr Jackson Adebayo, noted that the sack of the workers is not only an anti-people policy, but an irresponsible politics of a rudderless government.
