By Tejiri Ebikeme
The Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees , NULGE, Delta State Chapter has accused Delta State Governor, Dr. Ifeanyi Arthur Okowa of betrayal, saying his administration reneged on a gentleman agreement entered with the State Government about three months ago.
Our checks revealed that the initial gentleman agreement entails sharing of the monthly federal allocations accruing to Local Government Councils in Delta State in such a way that the Local Government Councils will get 50%, while the remaining 50% will be used to pay primary school staff, even as it was reliably gathered that the Okowa administration stopped release of the 600 million naira his predecessors used to augment Local Government allocations monthly.
Delta State President of NULGE, Comrade Ziko Okwudi who addressed thousands of Local Government Workers at the Uvwie Local Government Council Secretariat, Wednesday after leading the protesting Local Government staff round strategic major roads in Effurun, near Warri, in what is the beginning of protests across the three senatorial districts of Delta State, insisted that Local Government allocation is not for primary school teachers.
While demanding that all deductions by the Okowa administration from Local Government Federal allocations be stopped immediately, Comrade Okwudi revealed that the ‘mother’ of all rallies against perceived injustice to Local Government Workers in Delta State will hold at Asaba, the State capital after that of Delta South likely to take place in Warri, the commercial nerve centre of Delta State soonest.
Our Correspondent reports that the angry Local Government Workers chanted solidarity songs carrying placards with inscriptions such as, ‘Local Government Workers are not Second Class Citizens’, ‘No Salary, No Okowa 2019’, ‘Okowa is owing us one year salary, Ethiope East Local Government Council’, ‘We need Our 14 Months Salary’, Okowa JAAC has jacked Our Salary’, Prosperity For All Deltans Turned Poverty To All Deltans’ and ‘We Say No To Percentage Payment of Salaries’.
