Kogi state governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello on Thursday said the Government will soon be taking legal actions against some of those who compromised the system and fraudulently intercepted wages to which they were not entitled.
He made this known during a state broadcast to mark this year 60th anniversary of the country.
According to him, bringing consequences to those who compromised our workforce and payroll is one way we can forcefully deter such misconduct in future.
He mentioned that non-payment, late payment and percentage payment of salaries are becoming a distant memory to workers adding that prompt payment of salaries have become the norm now.
‘In as much as government revenues have always been tight since we took Office and Covid-19 has worsened matters even more, we will endeavour to keep meeting our wages obligations to the genuine civil servants of Kogi State.’
‘To give you an idea of the huge scale of this problem, let me inform you that this administration has had to clear over N50billion in salary obligations inherited from previous administrations.’
“The bulk of that money was borrowed and along with our other debt obligations continues to impede our ability to free up funds for infrastructural and other development as we would like. Those who actions hurt our state and people must face a reckoning,” he stated.’
He posited that those who look at Nigeria and see a dysfunctional polity or as some irrationally say, ‘a failed state’, can only do so because they have refused or otherwise failed to acquire a dynamic understanding of our ongoing metamorphosis.
He said every Nigerian will agree that our journey together has been a challenging odyssey adding that It is a credit to our unbroken will to succeed and our resilience as a nation of diverse peoples that we have made it thus far despite plenty of milestones in our history where we could have messed it up, or missed it totally.
Bello stressed that ‘we are not great because we have gotten it right in all respects, because we have not. We are great because we have what it takes. We have been blessed by our Creator with an abundance of the human resources and natural endowments we need to become or to achieve anything we want. All that remains is for us to get our act together – in citizenship and civics, but more importantly, in leadership and governance.’
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK