Govt. sacks NLC leader, claims he is a ghost worker

The government also said those that were sacked did not furnish the verification committee with relevant documents.

  Governor Yahaya Bello. (Elombah)

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

The government claims Edoka was identified as a ghost worker during the just concluded staff verification exercise.

The government also said those that were sacked did not furnish the verification committee with relevant documents.

According to Gbenga Olorunpomi, the aide to the Governor of Kogi state, Yahaya Bello, “For example, 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.”

Premium Times also revealed that the state government fired 9,000 workers from 21 local government areas.

According to Eboka, “The General’s committee claims that I submitted the wrong bank statements. But they only asked for my statement of accounts for the past two years which I submitted.”

He added that “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.”

The NLC chairman also 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.”

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) recently approved N20 billion as bailout for the Kogi sate government.