Retrenchment in Ondo Civil Service vindicated us, Labour Party

Olusegun Agagu

The Ondo State chapter of the Labour Party has described the Tuesday’s announcement by the Dr. Olusegun Agagu’s government of the sacking of the first batch of 354 workers in an on-going mass purge in the State Civil Service as a vindication of its prediction of an impending mass sack by the Agagu administration immediately after the election. LP had shortly before the election cried out over an imminent  retrenchment by Dr Agagu, a claim the party backed up with documentary evidence showing that the Government had already commissioned an Abuja based Consulting firm in 2005 to carry out the feasibility studies of how to reduce the State’s workforce by at least half. The firm had in its final report recommended that the purge should be carried out under several subheadings including, old age, certificate forgery, over stay in service, redundancy among others.

The Agagu government had expectedly denied the allegation saying that it was part of the LP smear campaign to win the forth coming April 14 Governorship election then. It equally described the document displayed by LP as a fake manufactured to score cheap point and garner votes from the workers. But commenting on the latest development on Wednesday, LP Director of Press, Mr. Kolawole Olabisi stated that LP has once again been vindicated by this mass purge.“When we cried out that there was a mass retrenchment on the way and we show concrete evidence from the very vault of Dr. Agagu even with picture of those to be sacked we were branded as liars, today we have been proved right.

“To us, we are not surprise by this exercise which is just a continuous one. It shows Dr Agagu’s
longstanding hatred for the workforce more so when it is obvious that they did not vote for him on April 14; this was his way of paying them back in their own coins. Indeed, by the time Agagu finishes with the
workers, there will be less than 6,000 workers that will be left in the Civil Service. In the place of those retrenched, Agagu intends to employ the  thugs whose services  secured to rig the election last April
and who have become restless, unruly and violent in their strident demands for their own dividends of
democracy for installing him as governor.

“We all saw what happened in Ese-Odo recently when his supporters took laws into their hands and had to kidnap 11 PDP chieftains in the area before they were given a paltry N25 million out of the initial N500 million ransom they asked for. This is aside the million of naira that had been doled out to several of his thugs under phony subheadings from government coffers”

The LP spokesman, however, enjoined the workers and the entire people of Ondo State to exercise more patience saying that these trying times shall soon pass away. “You all voted for Dr Olusegun Mimiko, a man with a caring heart, before your mandate was stolen in broad daylight with guns and outright rigging.  We have gone to court and by the grace of God, justice shall soon be done. In a Labour Party government, there is room enough for all, as a social-democratic party, the welfare of the people shall be our priority, there will be good things of life in abundant. Weeping may tarry for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. So our people should arise and shine for their salvation from the tyranny of the past four and a half years is almost over.”