Why My Govt Is Sacking Kaduna Public Workers – El-Rufai

• The Kaduna state government had on April 6, disengaged 4,000 local government workers

Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna state has explained that the reason why his administration is sacking public servants in the state is due to dwindling financial resources and higher wage bills which the government cannot be able to sustain.

In a statement signed by his spokesman, Muyiwa Adekeye, Governor El-Rufai insisted that the government was not elected just to pay salaries of public servants alone, but to also develop the state by building schools, hospitals, upgrading infrastructure and making the state more secure and attractive to the private sector for jobs and investments.

El-Rufai pointed out that what it has been receiving from the federal allocation committee since the middle of 2020, like most other sub-nationals, can barely pay salaries and overheads, adding that in the last six months, personnel costs have accounted for between 84.97% and 96.63% of FAAC transfers received by the Kaduna State Government.

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The statement reads: ’In November 2020, KDSG had only ₦162.9m left after paying salaries. That month, Kaduna State got ₦4.83bn from FAAC and paid ₦4.66bn as wages. In March 2021, Kaduna State had only ₦321m left after settling personnel costs.”

The statement pointed out that ‘’that month, the state got ₦4.819bn from FAAC and paid out ₦4.498bn, representing 93% of the money received.

‘’This does not include standing orders for overheads, funding security operations, running costs of schools and hospitals, and other overhead costs that the state has to bear for the machinery of government to run, for which the state government taps into IGR earnings.”

While the Kaduna State Government believes that the overall wages of the public sector are still relatively low, it noted that their current levels are obviously limited by the resources available to the government.

The government further argued that the public service of the state with less than 100,000 employees (and their families) cannot be consuming more than 90% of government resources, with little left to positively impact the lives of the more than nine million that are not political appointees or civil servants, adding that it is gross injustice for such a micro-minority to consume the majority of the resources of the State.

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