Editors’ note: The writer, Buchi Obichie, laments over the increasing rate of suicide among civil servants in the country who are being owed by their state governments. She chides the state governors for living flamboyantly while they owe their workers; and declares that for every individual who takes his life because of unpaid salaries, these governors have ‘blood crying out against them’ and judgment around the corner!
The date was Saturday, October 21; I had just returned back home and was waiting for my food to cook. As I stood close to the gas cooker (as if the rate of the food cooking was proportional to my proximity to the burner…LOL) I decided to browse the internet and see what had happened while I was offline.
I was flipping through the news sites when something suddenly caught my eyes. A civil servant in Kogi state, Mr Edward Soje, had committed suicide because he was allegedly owed 11 months’ salary by the state government!
Soje's wife had just welcomed triplets, and he probably felt like he wouldn’t be able to handle the financial burden. He had previously sold his only vehicle and his landed property. The police reportedly found his body dangling from a tree; after he had left a suicide note for his wife and 3 babies.
I was ‘shook’! The hunger immediately vanished!
A man had taken his own life because he felt he couldn’t live up to his responsibilities as a provider…because his state government had deprived him of his dues even when he had done his part by putting in the work!
To add more salt to the injury, his wife is also a civil servant, and just like her husband, is being owed by the state government; and now, she has to bring up 3 children...all alone! Children who would now grow up without their father!
Our leaders have failed us!
It was in this same state that the governor’s chief of staff declared boldly, that the state government owed its workers 12 months’ salary, and not 15 months…as if 12 months in itself was not an abomination!
In this same state, the governor stated that his appointees had made the ultimate sacrifice by going without official vehicles for one year; forgetting that the workers that he owed probably had to trek to work, because they could not afford transport fare! He went further with the insult by referring to striking workers (who were striking in the first place because they had not been paid in months) as ‘political civil servants’!
But the really sad thing though, is that this show of shame and blatant mistreatment of fellow human beings, is not just peculiar to Kogi state alone…it is actually a malaise that has become the norm in more than half of the entire states of the federation!
As at June 2017, a report by BudgIT revealed that states like Benue, Kogi, Abia, Oyo, Ondo and Ekiti, had not paid their civil servants since the year began. That same survey showed Imo, Taraba and Niger owing pensioners up to 3 years entitlements! As at September 2017, Kogi, Benue and Bayelsa allegedly owed between 5 and 10 months salaries and pension arrears!
And yet, all these states received ‘bail-outs’ from the Paris Club Refund!
What sort of a nation are we, if people don’t get their dues after putting in the work? How do these governors sleep at night?
And yet, while people suffer to the point of taking their own lives, these state executives go on living flamboyantly!
They can’t pay salaries yet they are building mansions in highbrow areas! They can’t pay salaries, yet their children are getting wed in $100k Elie Saab gowns and hanging out with the Kardashians! They can’t pay pensions, yet they are erecting statues that allegedly cost hundreds of millions of naira, for undeserving foreigners! They can’t pay salaries, yet they are flagging-off presidential campaigns even before the start of campaign season, and when their parties have stated that the presidential ticket has been zoned to another region!
I repeat, how do these men sleep at night? How do they fall asleep when people are killing themselves as a result of the suffering? How do they sleep when blood is crying out from the ground against them?
Blood is crying out from all corners- North, East, South, West!
Last year, a civil servant in Abia identified as De Nwankwo, also committed suicide after being owed 4 months’ salary. Like Mr Soje in Kogi, De Nwankwo also left a suicide note behind which read: “I have no other place to go, no hope, nothing to give to my children to eat and no salary for the past 4 months, I am sorry I have to do this.”
In January 2017, a certain Tope Afolayan who worked in the office of the accountant general of Ekiti state took his own life, after being frustrated by unpaid salaries and huge debt!
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When Cain killed his brother Abel, God said to him, "The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground. So now you are cursed from the earth..."
These governors who owe salaries are indirectly responsible for the deaths of these individuals, who they drove to despondency; and so, to these erring governors, I say, 'blood is crying out against you; and in time, your day of judgment will arrive!'
This opinion piece was written by Buchi Obichie.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of NAIJ.com.
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