THE PLIGHT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT WORKERS
The states should do well by paying workers’ salaries promptly
With less cash available to share from Abuja due to the national economic downturn, workers across the states are increasingly being subjected to harsh living conditions. But this is perhaps more pronounced among local government workers for whom there is little attention from critical stakeholders. A fortnight ago, the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) raised the alarm that the rising indebtedness of state governments to local government workers is now in excess of N40 billion. This has serious implications for social sector like education and health, especially at the grassroots level.
In a bid to address the problem, the NULGE had in the past embarked on strikes across the country, while calling on the authorities to stop the open discrimination between state and local government workers, “because we go to the same market.” With high inflation and an economy in distress, many of the workers can barely meet their basic needs. “Some (states) owe as much as N40bn,” said NULGE national president, Olatunji Ambali. “Many (council workers) died because they were unable to provide little medication that would have helped them when they were sick.”
Local government workers in Zamfara, one of most terrorised states in the Northwest, are increasingly being impoverished. Besides owing many months’ wages, their plight is worsened because the state reportedly still pays a minimum wage of N7,500, eleven clear years after the national minimum wage was reviewed upwards to N18,000 in 2011 and N30,000 by the Buhari administration in 2019. Enugu and Ebonyi are a bit better, but they are yet to pay the minimum wage of N30,000, an amount that has been rendered worthless by today’s market forces. Anambra and Ekiti States are also said to be owing local government workers. Besides Jigawa and Rivers States, which NULGE says are up to date in payment of salaries, others have more or less turned workers to beggars, because the governors are “using the local government funds as personal funds.”
Over the years, local government administration has thrown up many challenges which inhibit efficient service delivery. State governors have been consistently accused of frustrating the local councils by unnecessarily dipping their hands into their statutory allocations. Indeed, President Muhammadu Buhari once expressed misgivings on the relationship between the local governments and states, saying that “the states feel like they own the local governments.” The guidelines stipulating direct allocation to the local councils are designed to enhance the financial autonomy of the local governments and check the abuse of the Joint State/LG account by state governors.
The challenge has now been compounded as most state governments find it hard to pay salaries, and thus failing to meet the essential requirement of governance and employee compensation. A national survey conducted by BudgIT, a civic tech group, found for instance, that several states are guilty of non-payment of salaries, and civil servants are often “at wit’s end at month end.” Going by available statistics, no fewer than 12 states owed their workers at least one month’s salary as of July 2022. According to the report, Abia State currently owes its state tertiary institution workers six months’ salary, while Ebonyi has not paid its pensioners in the last six months. Similarly, Secretariat workers in Taraba have not been paid for six months, while lecturers at state tertiary institutions and midwives in the state-owned hospital in Ondo State “have not been paid a dime in the last four months.”
The states must prioritise employees’ rights by paying all accrued salaries. It is a contractual obligation. They must trim wasteful spending by returning to the path of prudence. And they should improve their resource mobilisation and become less dependent on federal allocation to meet their obligations to their workers.
