2nd May, 2017
Gov. Aminu Masari of Katsina State has accused senior civil servants in the state of sabotaging government activities.
Masari made this known at a special Dinner organised for labour leaders in Katsina on Monday night to mark the May Day.
“Some senior civil servants have been indulging in acts that are against the progress of government programmes and policies.
“We are aware that some of the senior civil servants that we inherited from the previous administration have not been assisting the present government to implement certain programmes.
“They don’t assist the state government in implementing key issues of the government that will make rural folks to benefit.
“The present government believed that civil servants are the engine room of the government but some senior civil servants are sabotaging our efforts.
“This group of saboteurs are indulging in activities that will not assist the state government to make judicious use of scare resources.
“Some of them are on daily basis disclosing top government secrets at various places,” he claimed.
Masari said that the state government had introduced mechanism to monitor such civil servants with the aim of dealing with them.
On continuous delay in the payment of local government workers, the governor blamed it on the activities of `dubious’ people.
According to him, the N3.6 billion statutory allocation for the 34 local government areas received in April 2017 from the Federation Account was inadequate to pay salaries.
He said that the state government had to add N100 million to the amount to be able to pay the April salary.
Masari stressed that 27 out of the 34 local councils in the state could not pay their staff salaries based on their receipts from Federal allocations.
The governor threatened to give all the 34 local governments their Federal allocation to pay salaries, if the wage bill kept rising.