Aregbesola Promises Payment Of workers Backlog Salaries By End Of June

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines, News From The State Sunday, June 14th, 2015

By Akin Soneyin – Public servants in Osun might begin to heave a sigh of relieve as the State’s Governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, has given assurance that their outstanding seven months salaries will be paid by June end.

Aregbesola who is currently facing criticsm over the ugly development made the promise in a statement issued Sunday in Osogbo, the State’s capital, by his Director of Communication and strategy, Semiu Okanlawon.

While reaffirming that the backlog would be paid as promised, Governor Aregbesola indicated that he had a great dream for the State and this informed why he was in a hurry to begin many programmes which had earned him accolades both within and outside Nigeria.

Despite the challenge his government is presently facing, the Governor insisted that his dream has not gone awry and it was a clear vision that the State must be on its feet, self-reliant as well as remained as a reference point in the country.

“The race to ensure development within the first term of Aregbesola was informed by the fear of what is happening now.

“Aregbesola wanted an Osun that is self-reliant. That Osun, almost two decades after its creation, could not boast of tax-paying companies speaks volume about the magnitude of the works that awaited the Aregbesola administration” the statement revealed.

While recalling the recent partnership between an indigenous firm and one of the Nigerian major telecommunication service providers, Aregbesola asserted that it was a lazy administration that would accept the tag of Osun as a “civil servant” state as an excuse for not developing initiatives for industrialisation.

Admitting such mentality he submitted would amount to reducing the survival of the South Western State on the meagre inflow leaving it (the State) to keep depending on external forces for her survival.

He challenged that the State must work hard to give her people many choices, adding “If you want to work in the civil service, it must be the choice that our people make on their own volition and not that there are no other choices regardless of their education, qualifications and expertise.”

He recalled the administration of former Lagos State Governor Bola Tinubu, whom he stated, despite inheriting in 1999, a meagre IGR, yet succeeded in increasing it via “the ingenious interventions and immediate provisions of infrastructure that lured investors in to create various opportunities for the people and made tax administration much easier” today in Lagos.