The All Progressives Congress (APC) government of Kogi State has labelled the state’s chairman of the Nigerian Labour Congress, Onuh Edoka and a “ghost worker” and fired him in what appears to be payback for leading the labour movement on protests over fuel price hike in the country.
Labour leader, Edoka, was one of about 9,000 people sacked by the state government following a screening exercise to weed out illegal workers from the 21 local government areas of the state. Until this bizarre action, he served as head of both the Medical Health Workers Union and the NLC in the state, said he was employed in 1989, and currently serves as a disease and surveillance officer in the state.
The exercise was overseen by a committee chaired by a retired military general, Paul Okuntimo who was best known for his infamous role in the incarceration of the late environmental activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa. An incarceration that ended in the state murder of the poet and Ogoni icon and 7 other Ogoni leaders.
Speaking to journalists, Edoka said he was “baffled by the result of the exercise” and said that the state NLC would stage street protests to challenge the government action against him which he views as punitive.
“The general’s committee claims that I submitted the wrong bank statements. But they only asked for my statement of accounts for the past two years which I submitted,” Mr. Edoka said in a telephone interview with Premium Times on Wednesday, May 25, 2016.
“The government just got a bailout based on the current staff strength. Suddenly, they want to retrench workers to divert the funds even though some of these workers have not been paid for over 23 months.
“The NLC is saying that these people are not ghost workers. They are living beings and we are ready to bring them out on the streets of Lokoja so that the world can see that they are not ghosts but real workers of Kogi state,” Mr Eboka maintained.
Responding to the allegation, a media aide to Governor Yayaha Bello of Kogi State, said some of the workers who failed the screening exercise did not furnish the committee with the required information.
He maintained that the screening process was transparent and designed to identify persons who gained employment or obtained promotions fraudulently. The government also said a new list would be released to clarify the reasons for the screening failure, is expected to be released within the week,
“For example, many of them refused to supply their BVNs [Bank Verification Numbers]. This automatically brings up the question of why they don’t have BVNs if they don’t have anything to hide,” the aide, adding that the current list is merely a preliminary list and that the said workers would be given the opportunity to rectify any deficiency.
“The governor has assured the people that no legitimate worker in Kogi state will be sacked. But there are some people who got into the system fraudulently. For those people, we have no apologies.”
