Don’t retrench workers, civil servants urge Buhari

The Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria has advised the President-elect, General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), not to listen to “misguided activists and failed

experts” who have started to advise him to retrench civil servants.

The organisation may have been reacting to a recent suggestion by a former President of the Nigeria Bar Association, Mr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), that the incoming administration of Buhari should “decapitate the civil service” which, he said, “is now bloated and should be cut down so that government can have more money.”

The ASCSN, in a statement by its Secretary-General, Mr. Alade Lawal, and obtained by The PUNCH on Tuesday in Abuja, expressed surprise that an incoming administration, which pledged to create employment opportunities for millions of Nigerians as one of its cardinal programmes, was already being advised to retrench civil servants under the guise that the civil service is “over- bloated”.

The organisation says Nigeria’s population is estimated at 160 million while the staff strength in the core civil service is about 100,000 (0.06 percent of the country’s population).

He said, “The public service itself which comprises the core civil service, the Armed Forces and the Police, Immigration, Customs and Federal Universities, is about 970,000 (0.61 percent of the country’s population).

“So, where do these ‘experts’ get their facts that the civil service is bloated. We challenge all those making this unsubstantiated claim to a public debate on the issue.”

The ASCSN enjoined Buhari to beware of fifth columnists who were in the habit of pushing every government to embark on anti-people policies which invariably would lead it to a collision course with the people.

The union wondered why these “activists” and “experts” maintained criminal silence while the treasury was being looted by the outgoing government officials at the centre.

Lawal argued that it was the political office holders with their retinue of special and ordinary advisers, senior, junior, and ordinary assistants and all manner of other political appointees that gulped                                             public finances in Nigeria.

According to him, it is common knowledge that Nigerian political office holders, including lawmakers and members of the Executive arm of government, are the highest paid in the world, most of them receiving more than the President of the United States of America.

“So, if the APC government is desirous to make meaningful change, it should do well to drastically reduce the humongous emoluments of political office holders to bring it in tandem with the salary in the public service and equally trim the innumerable number of sycophants politicians recruit as personal aides”, he advised.

The ASCSN posited that civil servants in Nigeria were the least paid in Africa, South of the Sahara with a meagre monthly national minimum wage of N18,000 which is not being paid by many state governments in the country.

“As we write, civil servants and their dependants moan and groan under the pain and pang of poverty because their miserable pay-packets cannot cater for their basic needs in an environment where every citizen is running a mini-government for himself or herself.”