Nigerian Concord Newspaper
The Benue state chapter of the People’s Democratic Party has described the governor of the state, Hyacinth Alia as a wicked man who has wickedly brought hardship on thousands of civil servants in the state by sacking them unjustly yesterday.
Recall that Governor Alia had yesterday sacked over twenty five thousand civil servants with the aim of cutting down the state wage bill.
In his reaction, the acting chairman of the PDP in Benue state, Isaac Mfo said the sack was a deliberate action by the governor to inflict severe pains and untold hardship on the victims and their families.
Condemning the sack, the Benue PDP’s acting chairman faulted the action of Governor Alia, describing it as “unlawful, insensitive and callous”.
Mr. Mfo argued that the appointment of the sacked workers was validly carried out and due process adequately followed by the administration of former Governor Samuel Ortom as required by law.
“The affected civil servants were given lawful appointments into the state Civil Service having fulfilled all statutory requirements and until this directive, were entitled to all the rights, privileges and protections guaranteed them under the labour laws of the state,” he said.
His words: “The insensitivity in the Benue State Governor’s action becomes more glaring when viewed against the backdrop of the untold hardship which Nigerians were subjected to under the recently expired Buhari regime in the forms of catastrophic economic mismanagement and such insecurity as directly threatened the country’s sovereignty”.
Mfo observed that the decisions taken by the Governor since assumption of office were faulty and lacked due diligence.
“PDP observes sadly that by this latest sack order Governor Alia has continued by the wrong footing of his administration so far, by executing weighty actions without following due process of consultations and interactive engagements needed to input into those actions necessary public content and connect as should obtain in a participatory democracy such as ours”. Mfo stated.
He however urged the Governor to reinstate the sacked workers with immediate effect, saying that: “Alia should therefore, without delay rescind the sack order he has issued to the thousands of civil servants in the state, as to do so will be to save his administration and the state as a whole the ill wind which the action is bound to generate which will surely do no one any good”
Mr. Mfo said the party would not rule out the possibility to institute a legal action against the administration if all avenues to get the sacked workers back on board fails to achieve the desired results.
“We condemn all the misguided, arbitrary and unpopular actions so far taken by Governor Hyacinth Alia and we call on all who mean well for Benue State to do same. This arbitrary sack order on Benue civil servants and those issued earlier to heads of Agencies and Parastatals in the state only opens the gateway to possible litigations which will not be in the interest of the administration and the state at large,” he said.
On the issue of insecurity in the state, the party equally frowned at the inauguration of a private security outfit, “Al-Teshak” by the state Governor which is linked to a profiled member of boko haram terrorist group, Mr. Aliyu Teshaku with a mandate to return Internally Displaced Person’s IDPs to their ancestral homes.
“This security initiative of Governor Alia is most absurd for the fact that it lacks legal backing and is questionable considering that this same Aliyu Tershaku had severally been arrested and profiled by federal security agencies as having links to the Boko Haram terrorists group,” the Benue State PDP Acting Chairman added.