The Director General on Media and Publicity to the Kogi State Governor, Kingsley Fanwo has said his principal, Governor Yahaya Bello did not violate any law for building a multi-million naira house in his native home town, Okene despite owing workers and pensioners their monthly entitlements.
Recall that there was wide outrage against the governor’s decision to erect a sprawling edifice in his hometown at the expense of workers and pensioners who have been unpaid for months in the state.
Fanwo who spoke while addressing journalists in Kaduna on Saturday referred to those agitating against the governor’s mansion as “a confused community of crumbling critics”.
In his words: “ I didn’t say anything because they are a confused community of crumbling critics who have lost focus and direction.
“They know the Governor was a successful businessman before his foray into politics. There is no correlation between the salary payment situation in the state and the Governor’s recently completed house at Okene.
“We have spoken severally about the salary situation in the state. We have paid genuine workers up to July 2017 and we are working on the arrears. It is also true that those who were recently pardoned and returned to the payrolls are being owed more number of months.
“We will pay what our Paris Club refund and allocations can pay to make the Yuletide an enjoyable one for our civil servants. They deserve their pay after all their contributions to the development of the state,” he said.
Mr. Fanwo said the Kogi State government will continue to strengthen its relationship with the organised labour, insisting that comparison of the state with oil producing and highly viable states was unfair.
“Anambra State was governed by a forward-thinking Governor who left a fortune for the incumbent. The present administration in Kogi inherited debts and unproductive loans. The Governor is working hard to build institutions that can sustain the gains of his reforms in the civil service,” he said.
