KOGI GOVERNMENT FIRES NLC LEADER

The Kogi state government has fired the state chairman of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Onuh Edoka.

The government said Edoka was sacked for being a ghost worker after missing the just concluded staff verification exercise.

According to the government, other workers that were sacked did not provide valid documents to the verification committee.

Aide to the state governor, Gbenga Olorunpomi, said, “Many of them refused to supply their BVNs [Bank Verification Numbers]. This automatically brings up the question of why they don’t have BVNs if they don’t have anything to hide.

“The governor has assured the people that no legitimate worker in Kogi state will be sacked. But there are some people who got into the system fraudulently. For those people, we have no apologies.” 

Edoka who spoke on behalf of the union after the termination of their appointment said the workers would take to the street to protest the government’s actions.

“The government just got a bailout based on the current staff strength. Suddenly they want to retrench workers to divert the funds even though some of these workers have not been paid for over 23 months,” he said.

“The NLC is saying that these people are not ghost workers. They are living beings and we are ready to bring them out on the streets of Lokoja so that the world can see that they are not ghosts but real workers of Kogi state,” Edoka said.

He was one of about 9000 people sacked following a screening exercise to weed out illegal workers from the 21 local government areas of the state.

Edoka, who serves as head of both the Medical Health Workers Union and the NLC in the state, said he was employed in 1989, and currently serves as a Disease and Surveillance Officer in the state.

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