We have paid 38 months’ salaries to our workers- Kogi govt

Contrary to labour’s claims, the Kogi State government says it has paid 38 months’ salaries to its workers since it came into office in January 2016.

Yaya Bello

The clarification came  from the director-general of Media and Publicity to the Governor, Mr. Kingsley Fanwo in Takete, Ide Amuro in Mopamuro local government when he briefed journalists after an All Progressives Congress (APC) stakeholders’ meeting in the ward.

Fanwo said: “One of the questions our party members asked during the meeting was about the claim by labour that we are owing workers 38 months’ salaries.

“As far as the government is concerned, we have paid 38 months’ salaries starting from September 2015. We have been in office for just 39 months. But we are still owing four months’ salaries because we started paying from the period when we were yet to assume power.

“We are not in any power play with labour. We will continue to appreciate their understanding and we pledge to clear all the arrears as soon as possible,” he said.

Fanwo explained that the state government had struggled to bridge the gap it inherited in the payment of salaries because of the dwindling revenue and contending needs of the people of the state.

The governor’s aide stated that “we know how pivotal salaries are to microeconomics and we also know we owe other sectors of the public a good number of social amenities.

“Government will continue to manage the contending interests to serve a good number of the population,”. He said.

On the rumoured decamping of the governor to Accord Party (AP), Fanwo said that the promoters of the rumour failed to “rehearse their falsehood properly.”

According to him, “such rumours will fail a major logic lab test. It is laughable to insinuate that a governor that just led our party to landslide and historic victory in the 2019 general elections is about to abandon his bungalow to rent a hut.

“If this is the kind of propaganda the opposition wants to fly with, then they are not ready for the forthcoming November 2 electoral battle in the state.

“Governor Yahaya Bello is the landlord of Kogi APC. Anyone coming is a tenant. Where were those opponents when he built the party into what dwarfed others in the 2019 elections? The people spreading these rumours are political comedians with lazy minds. They are conceding defeats with such cheap jokes,” he stated.

Fanwo challenged Senator Dino Melaye to go ahead to publish the expenditures of the government between 2016 to 2019, saying, “a good student of accounting and common sense will do good by publishing both income and expenditure.”

He said that the people of Kogi had seen the rice mill the governor is building and the roads under construction, adding that any form of “illogical incitement will be counter-productive.”

His words: “You can see the executives with me here. These are the people who will determine who flies our party’s ticket in November. The person they know is GYB and they will go all out to give him a second term.

“All the people dancing around Abuja are not known to the people. We also thank the federal government for giving us three boreholes in my ward. No senator should claim the glory of the APC-led federal government’s project. Our people are well informed now more than ever,” he said.

He thanked the people of the community and indeed the state for their solidarity during the assassination attempt on him, saying the action of the “cowards is a mark of their impending loss in 2019.”

According to him, “they could not stand the truth. But we shall show them our security architecture is capable of exposing their evil plans against government officials in the state.

“We have not even started yet and they are fidgety. Their mouthpiece senator should know that the people who are candidates for the prisons are the fraudsters that led the state in the past,” Fanwo said.