Posted by By Onyedi Ojiabor, Abuja on
The Conference of Nigeria Political Parties on Sunday appealed to President Olusegun Obasanjo to stop the ongoing mass sack of civil servants....
The Conference of Nigeria Political Parties on Sunday appealed to President Olusegun Obasanjo to stop the ongoing mass sack of civil servants.
A statement by the National Publicity Secretary of the CNPP, Mr. Osita Okechukwu, said the appeal became necessary to save the jobs of over 33,000 workers who are to be sacked in the reform of the civil service.
The CNPP spokesman said it was painful that since 1999, when the Obasanjo regime came into being, the dividend of democracy, which the workers had enjoyed, did not warrant the sack that they were being subjected to.
He said the group was worried that "over 33,000 civil servants are listed to be sacked in one fell swoop."
Okechukwu said, "We are appalled to witness ministers and commissioners sacking workers without the consent of federal and state civil service commissions.
'The puerile excuse had been that the private sector will fill the void created by the purge."
He said though the CNPP was not opposed to the retirement of duly aged civil servants and sack of those found wanting, 'however, we are opposed to mass sack under any pretext without due process of the law."
Okechukwu said the most painful was that the purge was going on without the skill acquisition programme promised by the government.
He said, "What we are witnessing is cruel hardship being visited on uncountable families in Nigeria. Today, unpaid pensioners are loitering in the streets of Abuja and state capitals.
"CNPP cannot fathom the basis for an economic reform programme that has no social security safety net nor provision for maximum welfare of the citizenry as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution."
He said the multiplier effect of hardship the sack would cause Nigerians was too obvious.
He said, "The so-called reform programme covers only the interest of the super-rich Nigerians at the expense of the majority that wallow in abject and humiliating poverty, crass unemployment and despondency."
Okechukwu described the purge as " anti-people, devoid of human face, unconstitutional and antithetical to the preservation of our values and human assets."
He urged Obasanjo "to stop the mass sack, unfortunately premised on sterile banality of dependency on a non-starter private sector that is suffocating under the yoke of decayed infrastructure to provide jobs."