Politics
El-Rufai sacks 99 political appointees
In order to reduce expenditure, the Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai has disclosed that he has set in motion processes towards implementing the disengagement of 99 political appointees.
He also clarified that the state government is yet to disengage any civil servant as only agencies connected to the local government system have disengaged staff.
El-Rufai made this disclosure on Friday while listing the 23 local government councils, State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), and the Primary Health Care Board as agencies to be affected.
He explained that the disengaged political appointees constituted 30 per cent of the total number of political office holders in the state.
‘’So far, 99 political appointees have lost their jobs, but we have not commenced rightsizing civil servants,” said Governor El-Rufai.
He added, “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.”
READ ALSO: El-Rufai warns of imminent food crisis due to insecurity
The governor stated that the rightsizing of civil servants would still go on as planned because of dwindling revenues that were accruing to the state government from the federation account.
He added that rightsizing commenced with political appointees because their details were clearly known, making it more straightforward to disengage them.
The governor also faulted the claims that the salaries of political appointees accounted for the bloated personnel cost of the state government.
‘’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 stated.
Governor El-Rufai added, “Kaduna State cannot continue to use 84 per to 96 per cent of our revenues to pay salaries of less than one per cent of the population.”
By Mayowa Oladeji
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