TheCable

Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna state, says the civil service rightsizing exercise will not affect the payment of the N30,000 minimum wage.

El-Rufai, who disclosed this on Friday during a media chat with journalists, said the state will still fund free education from primary 1 to SS3.

The governor said the state has started implementing its rightsizing policy by disengaging 99 political appointees.

He explained that though no civil servant has been disengaged, the rightsizing of civil servants will still go on as planned because of dwindling revenues.

“We are the first government, federal or state, to pay the minimum wage. We will retain the minimum wage of N30,000 and the consequential adjustments that gave most of our civil servants a 66% salary increase. We will also retain the minimum pension of N30,000 monthly,” el-Rufai said.

“So far, 99 political appointees have lost their jobs but we have not commenced rightsizing civil servants. We want to be fair with regards to civil servants. We had earlier promised that before we reduce the size of the civil service, we will start with political appointees and we have done that.

“Kaduna State cannot continue to use 84% to 96% of our revenues to pay salaries of less than 1% of the population. The rest of our people, all 99% of them, need better schools, hospitals, water supply, roads, markets and support for agriculture to make a living outside government.”

El-Rufai explained that the rightsizing commenced with political appointees because their details are clearly known, making it more straightforward to disengage them.

“However, civil servants with question marks on the veracity of their data have to be given a chance to clear the doubts before any action is taken on them,’’ he said.

The governor further said it’s untrue that the salaries of political appointees account for a bloated personnel cost.

“In March 2021, the salaries of these political appointees amounted to N259 million, while civil servants were paid N3.13 billion, aside from costs related to state contributions to pension, accrued rights and other personnel costs. So, it is false to insinuate that political appointees are the ones that guzzle most of the state’s resources,” he said.