Senior civil servants condemn SGF’s statement on boards’ executives

Kogi workers express worry over unpaid salaries
The Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) has condemned the recent pronouncement by the Secretary to Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, that members of boards of government agencies and parastatals cannot sanction chief executives of such organisations.

They, therefore, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to issue a disclaimer on the pronouncement to redress the wrong signals already sent to executive secretaries and directors-general of government agencies and parastatals that they have a licence to be lawless and indulge in impunity without members of the boards checking their excesses in the interest of the public service.

The association, in a statement by its Secretary-General, Alade Bashir Lawal, said Mustapha’s pronouncement was a licence for further impunity, lawlessness and corruption by such public officers.

Lawal, who enjoined Buhari to call the SGF to order so as not to further taint the anti-corruption war of his administration, wondered where in the world do board members of government agencies and parastatals stand arms akimbo as mere spectators while the chief executives under them turn such organisations into private estates, running them as slave camps, indulging in financial recklessness without the supervisory boards calling them to order.

In another development, Kogi workers have expressed worry over refusal of the state government to honour a simple agreement with labour leaders in the state to utilise the Paris Club refund to offset outstanding backlog of salaries.

The labour leaders described the governor’s refusal to pay workers’ salaries as betrayal.

The organised labour in the state had pointed at the irregularity in the figures being brandished by the Kogi State Government that the wage bill is N2.8 billion.

Also, the state NLC Chairman, Onuh Edoka, when he led a protest march over new minimum wage, asked rhetorically that if the immediate past administration left a wage bill of N2.6 billion, which include salaries of all those sacked or relieved from service by the present administration and monthly impress to offices, where was the new figure of N2.8 billion emanating from?