Olojede, Oyo state NLC chairman

A sign that Nigerians are living in an anomic state reared its head in Oyo state today with the disclosure that the government of Abiola Ajimobi has struck a peace deal with workers to surrender 100 per cent of Federal allocation for salaries.

In any case, the dwindling allocation will not be enough to satisfy  the wage bill of the  workers, now five months in arrears,   and they may soon demand a share of the Internally Generated Revenue, which stands at about N2billion monthly.

This will raise the question as to how the state will finance the social and infrastructure projects for the 95 per cent of the people in the state who are not government workers and who are entitled to government attention.

Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) in Oyo State relished the concession from government and announced on Friday  it had shelved its proposed strike to protest the five months unpaid salaries of workers.

The state NLC Chairman, Mr Waheed Olojede, who spoke with newsmen at the NLC Secretariat, said the union shelved the strike following a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by Gov. Abiola Ajimobi and labour leaders.

“We reached an agreement after a meeting with the governor on Thursday evening where we agreed that the entire monthly allocation released to the state by the Federal Government should be used to pay the salaries.

Ajimobi: what is left for the 95% of the people

“Initially, 90 per cent of the allocation was used to pay workers’ salaries but this has not solved any problem.

“ So we asked the government to give us the entire allocation which is 100 per cent,” Olojede said.

According to him, labour expects that the allocation for states will increase since the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had promised not to deduct money owed by debtor states for two years.

Olojede also said that labour and government had agreed to work together to increase Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) in the state by constituting a committee on this.

“ We agreed to name it the “Joint Revenue Mobilsation Committee’’ which will be .inaugurated soon.

“ The committee’s duty is to improve and increase the IGR in the state,” he said.

The NLC chairman, however, called on workers to be patient and allow the government and labour put into operation the new MoU.

It will be recalled that the NLC on March 29 gave the state government a seven-day ultimatum to open dialogue with it or face an industrial action. (NAN)