Adamant Gov El Rufai dares NLC to stage another protest in Kaduna
Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai has dared the Nigerian Labour Congress to return to Kaduna for protest again. The governor in a radio interview in Kaduna on Thursday night said the NLC leadership was paid from Abuja to organise the last protest in Kaduna.
NLC had held the protest against a planned mass sack of workers by the state government which said it was spending too much on the state’s revenue on its civil servants.
The federal government stepped in after three days of the five-day warning strike and got the two parties to the negotiation table.
But Mr. El-Rufai’s tone since the truce shows he is not mollified.
“We know what happened, the NLC were paid from Abuja to come to Kaduna and protest and we know who gave them money, we will soon expose them,” Mr. El-Rufai said in the interview.
He said the NLC staged the protest without any concrete evidence that the state had retrenched public servants inappropriately.
“Everything the NLC said was a lie, the state government did not sack any civil servant. In fact, as I speak to you now, the state government is screening the credentials of the over 30,000 civil servants in the state. It is based on that that we are going to relieve those we find guilty of their employment.
“Some civil servants have fake certificates, some are using other people’s certificates. We are checking all that and when we finish, we will do away with them. So, what the NLC is saying about the state is wrong.”
The governor further repeated his threat to prosecute all those who participated in the NLC protest.
Premium Times had reported how the NLC protested in Kaduna, in April.
The protest resulted to the cutting off of Kaduna from the electricity national grid for three days before the intervention of the federal government.
The state government insisted on its plan to sack civil servants it consider excess load despite the intervention.
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