Former Senior Special Assistant to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, Doyin Okupe gave a startling piece of advice to states that are struggling to pay workers’ fees.
Mr. Okupe is of the opinion that governors should instead of requesting for bailout funds to pay workers, they should just reduce the workforce by sacking them.
He also accused governors as being the reason why Jonathan couldn’t save any money with the constant demands for funds from the Federal Government and a bloated civil service.
Doyin Okupe said all this in a statement issued by him in which he said “Firstly, virtually all state governments in the country have over bloated civil service. At some point between 2008 and 2009, Ogun state received N2b monthly from the federation account and paid out N1.8b as staff salaries, wages and overhead costs.”
“The total staff strength was about 50,000 while the population of the state was about 5,000,000. An obvious socio-economic absurdity and incongruity, therefore, existed where 10 per cent of the population was consuming 90per cent of the wealth of the state.”
“We do not need a soothsayer or an economic guru to foretell that this is unsustainable. In many States, the percentage of the resources of the state that is consumed by the civil service ranges between 70 per cent to 80 per cent by not more than 10 per cent of its population.”
“A basic economic dictum says ‘if expenditure cannot be controlled, then internal demands must be curtailed’. Without a doubt, therefore, all state governments must immediately start the process of downsizing their workforce with reasonable cushions for those who will be affected.”
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