Retired Kaduna civil servants launch campaign to get El-Rufai voted out over non-payment of entitlements

ABOUT 36,000 retired civil servants from the 23 local government in Kaduna State who were compulsorily retired by Governor Nasir El-Rufai have stepped up plans to get him kicked out of office when the March gubernatorial elections hold.

 

Nigeria goes to the polls next month, with presidential elections holding on February 16 and governorship elections taking place on March 2. Governor El-Rufai, who is standing for re-election, sacked 36,000 local government workers in November, 2017 as part of his civil service reform programmes and is yet to pay them their entitlements.

 

Incensed at their treatment, the civil servants have urged the people of the state to comply with President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive to vote out any governor that refuses to pay workers and retirees their entitlements in the coming general elections. Comrade Umar Jafar, the secretary of the retirees, said they were forced by circumstances to notify the general public of the evil the present government has meted on them and to mobilise the public against the All Progressive Congress (APC) and Governor El-Rufai.

 

Comrade Jafar said they came to the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) to protest the non-compliance of Kaduna State to pay their entitlements after 15 months of compulsory retirement. According to Comrade Jafar, Kaduna is one of the states that has collected the highest amount of money from the Paris Club refunds and not a penny has been paid to them.

 

He said: “Under normal circumstance as it applies with civil service rules, if a staff is retired whether voluntary or compulsorily, he should be paid his gratuity and there and then enrol for his pension. We are not against the retirement but what we are protesting now is the state government non-compliance with the rules of disengagement, even though there were series of complaints from here and there.

 

"However, President Muhammadu Buhari recently told the whole world that any governor that did not comply in paying staff and pension entitlement shall be voted out of government in this election. We are here today to tell the good of people of Kaduna State to come out en mass to vote anything that is associated with Mallam Nasir El-Rufai out of office come February 16 and March 2, having refused to obey President Buhari’s orders.

 

He pointed out that President Buhari directed all the governors to pay workers and retirees their entitlement with the huge amount of money from the Paris Club funds that has been giving to state governments. According to Comrade Jafar, Governor El-Rufai has been going online telling the general public that he has settled the retirees, which is not true.

 

Comrade Jafar added: “We know that it will be very difficult for him to pay us within this few days to the elections since he was unable after 15 months, so our best option is to come out to let the public know the situation this government has put us in. We are in very bad situation now, suffering from abject poverty, we cannot feed our families, pay school fees of our children, house rents, hospital bills.

 

"Some of the women you see here are widows as a result of this retirement without pay as their husbands died out of frustrations and some of us had to divorce our wives because they could not tolerate the hardship. It is very unfortunate that the person we voted in 2015 thinking that he was coming to relieve us from hardship incidentally became more dangerous than we expected and he has so much endangered our lives and that is why we came to cry out to the remaining of our colleagues in the service and the general public to shine their eyes and vote wisely by voting El-Rufai out."

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