Imo Civil Servants and 100% Salary Approval By Ihedioha: To Whom And How? 

By Ikenna ONUOHA

If pity is to be extended to any person in the state, it should be Civil Servants in Imo state. They should be seen as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) rather than Imo workers... why?

Because it can never be rulled out that the state either pay lip service to the well-being of her workforce or sees them as inferior nucleus that have little or nothing to offer.

While civil servants in Zamfara, Adamawa and Cross Rivers states among others are in joyful mood over government's approval of the N30,000 minimum wage, Imo Civil servants are rejoincing for the approval of 100% salary scale.

A curious mind would begin to ask if Civil Servants are not paid 100% of their salary, what else will government pay them? Is their salary not supposed to be paid out-rightly to amount to hundred percent ab initio? Is salary payment to workers a right or privilege?

In this context however, the decision of former Governor of the state, Senator Rochas Okorocha to slash the salary of civil servants from its original and constitutionally allowed hundred percent (100%) to an illegal and fraudulent seventy percent (70%) is indeed a height of not only greed, selfishness and inneptitude but an aberration of natural justice which should be condemned without fear or favour.

However, it has become pertinent to ask Governor Emeka Ihedioha to explain if the 100% salary scale he approved is also applicable to those Imo workers he suspended? If no, what happened to them, their families and their dependants? If the approval was for Imo workers, should we believe that the workers under illegal suspension are not Imo sons and daughters?

Can Governor Ihedioha put himself in the shoes of those helpless workers under suspension and see how it pains? What of those whose appointment letters were signed on April 13th, 2019 and posted to local governments? Is the approval also applicable to them since they never received any salary since their recruitment or appointment?

To be candid, the method in which the said approval passed through is not only ambiqous but very tricky to cow civil servants from requesting for the approval of the 30,000 minimum wage.

As a conscious and mobile intellect, it is worthy to know that nothing on earth gives a labourer joy that wages for his labour, not even the beer, food, chicken or other auxiliary merriments an individual may provide for them is capable of deriding or diverting their quest to seek for the payment of a labour he/her renders.

I had chosen never to talk or write anything good or bad against Governor Ihedioha again until after his hundred (100) days in office, but due to uncontrolled pressure from some concerned helpless and handicapped Imolites who think that Governor Ihedioha is deviating from the norm necessitated this view point.

According to Martin Luther King (Jnr), "a society where bold and outspoken persons are afraid to speak out, the inhabitants of the county accept every decision of government hook line and sinker". This is indeed what a Comedian Governor calls "iberiberism".

Meanwhile, despite the approval of the hundred (100%) salary scale for workers which is what it supposed to be, the same civil servants are waiting patiently for the Governor to also approve the 30,000 minimum wage as already passed into law.

Governor Ihedioha should as a matter of necessity do everything possible to redeem and revive the desires of Imo people which no doubt, have started getting frustrated.

The suspension of Imo workers and his decision not to pay them their constitutional entitlements is the bane of the whole imbroglio. He should think fast and revert immediately.

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Ikenna ONUOHA is a Media and Public Relations Consultant. He is the State Publicity Secretary, Imo Concerned Citizens (ICC). Email: [email protected] or [email protected]