The All Progressives Congress in Oyo State has raised the alarm over the alleged fake figures recently credited to Governor Seyi Makinde as representing the state governmentโs monthly wage bill and the staff population put at N11 billion and 115, 000 respectively describing it as a โfutile attempt to cover up the brazen looting of the public treasury by the present administration of the Peoples Democratic Party.
Media sources had reported last week that Makinde told participants at the Nigerian-American Business Forum in Tampa, Florida, United States that the state has 115,000 civil servants and a wage bill of N11 billion per month, which is just 1.4 per cent of the total population.
In a statement issued on Friday and made available to journalists in Ibadan by its Assistant Publicity Secretary, Prince Ayobami Adejumo, Oyo APC regretted what it called apparent lack of direction and promise on the part of the current PDP government of Gov. Seyi Makinde โwhich has done more harm than good to the people of the state in the last nine months.
โWe had waited patiently for Gov. Makinde to make a u-turn and blame his handlers for improper briefing on this particular matter like he has always been doing since his assumption of office last year May. But it is apparent that the governor was on a mission to sell a dummy with a view to doing a cover up on the palpable diversion of monies from the state government coffers into some private accounts.
โHe went as far as the United States to make a disclosure of 115, 000 workforce and N11b wage bill which he claimed to have been paying since June 2019 even when he had never mentioned this to anyone at home despite being wanting to be in the media every time by the way of propaganda sponsorship and benefiting from calculated media hype.
โTo set the record straight, the statistics obtainable as at May 2019 is as follows; Core Civil Servants -10,789, TESCOM staff (teaching/non teaching) -17,615, Local Government Staff -12, 264, SUBEB Staff -23, 352, Parastatals -2,266, NYSC (Corps members serving in the state) -3,403. State government pensioners -16,539 and a total Wage Bill of N5.2b including payments to all political office holders and Subventions to state owned tertiary institutions. It is worthy of note that monthly payments to local government council staff (12, 264), public primary school employees (23, 352) and local government pensioners (8,805) are being made directly from federal allocations to the 33 LGAs.
โIn view of the foregoing, the questions that readily come to mind are; how did Gov. Makinde come about his figures? Has there been any recruitment of new staff to justify the 20, 000 additional staff population figure? When did salary payments to local government staff and retirees become the responsibility of a state government? Why has the Oyo state government not released the breakdown of the figures quoted to put paid to the concerns raised globally about the governorโs claims? When did the state government commence the payment of its compressed new minimum wage to workers in the state and is this responsible for the over N5.8b increase in wage bill?
โIt is equally worrisome that labour unions in the state have kept mute over this development when, in fact, they are in the best position to do the needful and save the state resources from being plundered. But, we are not unmindful of the fact that a section of the leadership of the labour unions are being constrained by the role they played in helping the current PDP administration to get to power as it would be too early for them to express regrets in the open.โ APC said.
Meanwhile, the state chapter of the APC has also warned Gov. Seyi Makinde to thread with caution as his administration โcontinually takes actions inimical to the smooth running of the third tier of government in Oyo State in view of the needless engagement.
