Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El Rufai has disengaged 99 political appointees. The disengagement is aimed at implementing the rightsizing policy of the state government.
However, the state is yet to disengage any state civil servant.
Elrufai revealed that only agencies connected to the local government system have disengaged staff and these include the 23 local government councils, SUBEB, and the Primary Health Care Board.
At a media interaction with some Kaduna local journalists on Thursday, El-Rufai explained that the disengaged political appointees constitute 30% of political officeholders.
According to him, ‘’So far, 99 political appointees have lost their jobs but we have not commenced rightsizing civil servants.
“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.”
Speaking in Hausa, the governor said that the rightsizing of civil servants will still go on as planned because of dwindling revenues that are accruing to the state government from the federation account.
The governor however clarified that 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.
Justifying the rightsizing of the public service, he said that all states and the federal government are affected by this shortfall of revenue and some states have even reverted to paying the old monthly minimum wage of N18,000.
‘’Kaduna State cannot continue to use 84% to 96% of our revenues to pay salaries of less than 1% of the population. The rest of our people, all 99% of them, need better schools, hospitals, water supply, roads, markets, and support for agriculture to make a living outside government,’’ he said.
The governor however promised that Kaduna state will not reverse the N30,000 minimum wage that it has started paying.
The governor disclosed that it is a fallacy to allege that the salaries of political appointees account for the bloated personnel cost of the 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 pension, 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.
