NIGERIAN CIVIL SERVANTS- Okonjo Iweala should be sacked

The Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria has called on President Goodluck Jonathan to sack the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, for allegedly making false claims about the Federal Government’s workforce to the National Assembly.

The association in a statement in Abuja on Tuesday also called on the President to remove the Director-General, Budget Office, Dr. Bright Okogu, from office for allegedly committing the same blunder.

The association described as false the alleged claim by Okonjo-Iweala and Okogu to the National Assembly that the civil service had one million workforce and was consuming 37 per cent of recurrent expenditure of the annual federal budget.

 The Secretary-General of ASCSN, Mr. Alade Lawal, who issued the statement on behalf of the association in Abuja, said it would be in the overall benefit of the Jonathan’s regime if the duo were removed from office.

The statement reads in part, “President Goodluck Jonathan should do well to sack these failed experts who espouse outdated theories borrowed from the archives of equally expired neo-liberal Bretton Woods Institutions (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) which have ruined the economies of most developing and even European countries.

“The sooner he dispenses with their services, the better for his administration and the country.”

Several calls and text messages to the Special Adviser to the Minister of Finance  on Communications, Mr. Paul Nwabuikwu, for response were not replied.

However, ASCSN called for the sacking of the two government officials following government’s failure to pay civil servants their December salaries and their outstanding emoluments since July 2013.

The association’s secretary wondered why both Okonjo-Iweala and Okogu could not distinguish between civil service and public, the reason which he said was why the two of them made wrong claims about the federal workforce to the National Assembly.

 The statement also reads, “For the avoidance of doubt, the federal civil service is made up of about 100,000 employees while the enlarged public service, has a staff strength of 870,000.”

Culled from The Punch