Bauchi state Governor, Sen Bala Mohammed Abdulkadir, has decried that the civil service no longer has the Technical people, the Engineers, the Accountants as well as the Administrative officers to effectively and efficiently run it.
“They are all gone, even our Extension workers are not there, how do we progress, our education system is producing graduates, and we are not absorbing them, our system is very poor, and yet we sit here and delude and deceive ourselves, paying N6 to N7 billion monthly while not employing”, the Governor decried.
The Governor, therefore, said that already, people of the state have been assured that not fewer than 10,000 of them will be employed in order to fill all existing professional cadre in the service.
Bala Mohammed also lamented the increasing monthly wage bill despite the fact that the state was not employing new workers over the years.
The Governor was speaking on Friday during the closing ceremony of a 3-day retreat organized by the Office of the Head of Civil Service in conjunction with the at the state Hajj Camp Friday, regretted that despite migration of workers who retired to pension platforms the nominal roll is increasing.
Bala Mohammed stressed that, “Of course, somebody has just spoken about the nominal roll, the nominal roll is developed by the service, we, the Politicians are frustrated.”
According to him, “Yesterday, somebody talked about stress, anytime I see the Accountant General, it stresses me, even when he was talking, he was stressing me because I didn’t understand what he was saying.”
“People are retiring, they are migrating to pension platforms, but my salaries, the portfolio is increasing, and we are not employing and nobody will come and give me any explanation as to what is happening”, the Governor said.
The Governor added that, “Yesterday, Dr Ishaku spoke very well and this is a challenge to our civil service and to our political appointees, all of us, the new Commissioners are here, you are to drive the nominal roll, we have to get tangible and measurable savings from the salary portfolio otherwise we cannot get money to employ.”
According to him, “some people are earning what they don’t work for, period, and we cannot develop the data, so, it’s a challenge”.
Bala Mohammed urged the need for a change of mindset towards public service regretting that people believe they will sit down in their offices and get double salary.
“We have to change mindset, mindset of all of us. People believe that they will sit down in their offices and get double salary or in their local government and input people that will be collecting money or in our Emirate Councils or our local Councils,” he added.
He stressed that, “We have to make the change because, this is Haram, mind you, we are Muslims or Christians, this is Haram money. That is why may be, we are not progressing, because we are all living on Haram, educating our children on Haram, living above our means.”
The Governor further said that, “I have studied very well, our system is rotten, we try to eat what we cannot afford.”
According to him, “Somebody has spoken about education, how many of us are taking our children to government schools, even though they have Teachers, they have everything, in some Primary Schools, you don’t even have the Teachers on reality checks but on paper you have so many of them, so we have to change.”
He further stressed that the state Primary Healthcare Development Agency has to work, revealing that the over 1000 Primary Health Centers have been built in partnership with development partners.
He however, observed that hospital rooms do not make a Clinic without the human capital, adding that the state cannot employ because ghost workers have taken the job spaces.
A visibly worried Bala Mohammed said that, “I am always frustrated, we want to employ, pre-service employment of Doctors, Nurses and Midwives, when we were growing, this is how it was done, seamless migration after graduation, at least you will get the trained Nurse in a PHC.”
He however lamented that, “We don’t have them anymore, we have revolving fund that we established when we came, but they have been encroached upon, equipments that we bought in the hospitals are been stolen and nobody is doing anything, no penalty, our punishment and reward systems are not working.”
He further noted that: “I think, that is the essence of coming here for us to sit down and talk to ourselves that we need to change”.
. TheWitness
