Osun guber: Salary crisis won't affect APC chances - Party chieftain

macfranc007 September 20, 2018 Nigeria News today & Breaking news ▷ Read Naija news 24/7 Jerrywright Ukwu

- Semiu Okanlawon, a chieftain of the APC is confident that the party will win the forthcoming Osun governorship election

- Okanlawon, spokesperson of Osun state governor, Rauf Aregbesola, says the salary crisis in the state won't affect the party's chances

- He, however, explained the way the outgoing government has been able to handle the issue

Semiu Okanlawon, a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Osun state, is confident that the party will win the forthcoming Osun governorship election

Okanlawon, spokesperson of Osun state governor, Rauf Aregbesola, says the much talked about salary crisis in the state won't affect the party's chances.

He, however, explained the way the outgoing government has been able to handle the issue in an interview with Premium Times.

He said the government of Aregbesola at inception, came up with the idea of not waiting for the allocation to the state from the federal government.

He said: “What we tried to do was that the governor gave a standing order that by the 26th of every month, salary of workers must be paid regardless of whether allocation came or not.

“Don’t also forget that allocation comes to every state until three or four weeks after a particular month. That means if we are going to wait for allocation, we would need to wait for about three or four weeks into the new month before the salary of a particular month was paid. And these have been practiced until Nigeria itself and the entire world ran into economic windstorm around 2013/2014.

“We paid salary as at when due on the 25th or 26th of every month workers were paid their salary they did not ask for the thing to be reversed for this government did it. They did not also ask for the New Year bonus, the 13th-month salary, which means at the end of December, workers were paid there 13th-month salary.

“And don’t forget there was a kind of labor issue. Minimum salary issue in 2012 that now increased the minimum wage to N18, 000 at that time. Of course, at that time for a state at that time that has less than N2 billion wage bill that such a thing now jacked up the wage bill to about N3.6 billion now and with no additional coming in. Don’t forget we met a state that was generating less than N300 million per month as IGR.

“If you have a state that has more than 20,000 workers and you are generating IGR of less than N300million or N250 million per month, then the only option for us was to just start just paying salaries to workers and leave every other thing.

“That means you must have left the schools in the condition we met them, we would have left the roads in the condition we met them and we would have left the hospitals in the condition we also met them, and security the way we met it, including the youths we would not have provided what we called the youth engagement we created.

“When the economic situation now got to a bad stage, that was when the issue of outcry over salary being owed and all that. And when we were hit by sudden challenge, of course, it met us unprepared but it only took sometime before we sort our self out.”

He said the government engaged with the workers and told them the reality they faced and made them choose what they wanted.

“We gave them two options: that it is either we continued to pay salaries in full and reduce workers or we keep everybody together and we pay as we are paying. We told the union to go and decide on their own.

“The leaders of the workers went back and met and decided to take what was available than be retrenched. That was the option that workers from salary levels 1-7 would be paid their full salary 100% and I can tell you that up till today, the last salary that was paid was that of July, no worker from grade level 1-7 is owed any amount. None,” he said.

He added that political appointees inclduing himself, has been on half salary since the day the decision was made.

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Meanwhile, Adejare Bello, ex-speaker of the Osun state House of Assembly, defected to the APC, barely a week to the governorship election.

Bello, a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had on Monday, September 17, resigned his membership of the party.

In a letter addressed to Soji Adagunodo, the PDP state chairman, the former speaker said that he resigned his membership because the party has drifted from the ideals of its founding fathers.

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