From Noah Ebije, Kaduna
Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El Rufai said his administration has started implementing its rightsizing policy by disengaging 99 political appointees, adding that no state civil servant has been disengaged.
The governor said only agencies connected to the local government system have disengaged staff, including the 23 local government councils, SUBEB and the Primary Health Care Board.
El-Rufai who made the disclosure at a media chat with some Kaduna-based broadcast journalists on Thursday night, explained that the disengaged political appointees constitute 30 per cent of political office holders.
“We want to be fair with regards to civil servants. We had earlier promised that before we reduce the size of the civil service, we will start with political appointees and we have done that,’’ he said.
The governor, who spoke in Hausa, said that the rightsizing of civil servants will go on as planned because of dwindling revenues accruing to the state government from the federation account.
He said the rightsizing commenced with political appointees because their details are clearly known, making it more straightforward to disengage them.
“However, civil servants with question marks on the veracity of their data have to be given a chance to clear the doubts before any action is taken on them,” he said.
The governor said his government has employed 11,000 more workers in the health sector, Kaduna State University as well as primary and secondary school teachers across the state. He said it’s fallacy to allege that the salaries of political appointees account for the bloated personnel cost of Kaduna State Government.
“In March 2021, the salaries of these political appointees amounted to N259 million, while civil servants were paid N3.13 billion, aside from costs related to state contributions to pensions, accrued rights and other personnel costs. So, it is false to insinuate that political appointees are the ones that guzzle most of the state’s resources,” he said.
He said all states and the federal government are affected by this shortfall of revenue, noting that some states have even reverted to paying the old monthly minimum wage of N18,000.
“Kaduna State cannot continue to use 84 per cent to 96 per cent of our revenue to pay salaries of less than one per cent of the population. The rest of our people, all 99 per cent of them, need better schools, hospitals, water supply, roads, markets and support for agriculture to make a living outside government,” he argued.
The governor however promised that Kaduna state will not reverse the N30, 000 minimum wage that it has started paying.