TUC gives Oyo governor 15 days to pay workers six months’ salary

Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo state has been handed a 15-day ultimatum by the State Chapter of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC), to pay the backlog of six months salaries owed state workers by the government.

Led by Comrade Emelieze Andrew, the union at a press briefing held in Ibadan, also called on President Muhammadu Buhari to urgently declare a state of emergency on the nation’s economy, as states and federal workers, as well as residents of the state, ‎were suffering beyond expectation.

‎In case Governor Ajimobi is not able to pay the six months salary which has brought the state to its almost a month of industrial action, the union said that “he should in the alternative resign from office on the ground of incompetence or face mass action from the TUC and the suffering masses.”

According to Emelieze: “The labour centre has patiently watched the nonchalant attitude of the state government on the issue of salary payment in Oyo State which has made the salary arrears pile up to six months due to government’s unrepentant disposition in this regard.

“The labour centre is very sad with the financial embarrassment the situation has caused civil servants in the state, coupled with the harsh and unfriendly economic policies of the national government in Nigeria, a situation that has turned high percentage of civil servants in the state to be financially impotent”.

He noted that the union had employed several diplomatic measures to make the state government responsive to its statutory task of paying salaries, “but that the government had employed deceitful measures of claiming before the general public that it has set up a committee with the labour centres in the state to look at its accounts and propose alternative way of solving the humiliating financial state of toiling state workers.”