A Rebuttal to Gov. Umahi’s Claims on Ebonyi Workers

Nwoba Chika Nwoba (Abakaliki)

First day of May is a day set aside to celebrate civil servants in Nigeria. It’s a day in every year Nigeria’s workforce observes a session of recognition and celebration for their sterling services to nationhood and mankind. It’s observed in all the states of the country and the FCT. In this year’s Workers’ Day in Ebonyi State, the outgoing Governor of the state, Engr David Umahi has chronicled what he called his achievements in the civil service system of the state which as usual is an account in falsity.

Engr David Umahi met a well-stocked and structured civil service system in 2015, and upon his installation as Governor, the first dictum he made was that he’s not God who promises and delivers completely. This implies that he was duty bound to renege on the promises made to the civil servants when he was campaigning to become Governor of Ebonyi State in 2015. Indeed, without mincing steps, Umahi brought the civil service system to practical and legendary ruination. He immediately polarised the system and created a divisive group within the labour structure and named it “Junior Workers Union” of the NLC, Ebonyi State, a group he regularly deferred to any time he wanted to carry out dastardly actions within the civil service system. He further christened the group, “Akubaraoha Civil Servants”. Akubaraoha is his purchased chieftaincy title which he co-opted into politics and leadership of the state. This creation was aimed at rivalling the NLC and create a deluge of praise singers whose stock-in-trade was to antagonise justifiable actions of the mother union, NLC. He also fictionalised the leadership structure of the union, recognising one and chastising the other with threats of salary seizure and to their lives. He moved into the Ebonyi State University and created what he called Divine Mandate Lecturers. Divine Mandate was his 2015 campaign mantra. These lecturers were used to create friction in the system. He also created the Divine Mandate Pastors, a league of greedy and selfish clergymen singing his obdurate praises. Anyone or group of workers or lecturers who refused his overture of joining the translucent group was treated in the likeness of a slave and declared persona-non-grata at their places of work. He extended filthy hands of favoritism to the members of this nasty union just to mock the others opposed to it.

Since 2015 that Umahi assumed office, he has never promoted any civil servant till today. He has never carried out a recruitment exercise into the civil service. He slashed salaries of workers by more than 50%. He refused paying gratuities till today. He paid some varying slavish sums of money to the retired Permanent Secretaries which is against the law. Just in the middle of April, 2023, his minions at the Ebonyi State House of Assembly mustered the courage and compelled him to use the N6 billion the House was going to approve for him and offset backlogs of salaries, pension, gratuities and revitalisation of the civil service system. He’s yet to be seen or heard taking any stridal step into implementation of the policy for which the humongous sum was approved by the stuttering House of Assembly. Federal Government gave out money to the Government of Ebonyi State under David Umahi to erect a 5,000 unit housing estate with topnotch facilities characterising it. It’s over four years it was approved, yet, nothing is on ground to reflect the large sum of money accrued to this noble project to ease off the accommodation difficulty experienced by workers. Rather than upgrading the workforce structure he met in 2015, he vitiated the progress the preceding administration of which he was Deputy Governor made in entrenching a progressive labour mechanism.

Gov. David Umahi has at several fora pronounced empowerment and agricultural packages for the workers, but reneged after the news of the miragelike magnanimity had made headlines and garnered traction in the media. Gov. Umahi has never done anything known to time and history to better the faltering lots of the civil servants of Ebonyi State, instead, he coerces them into practical politics just to score vainglorious points. Ebonyi civil servants are about the most starved in Nigeria since 2015. He doesn’t only starve them, but verbally abuses them openly. In one of the occasions, he announced that his administration would do without the civil servants. Evrryone thought it was a comment induced by intake of narcotic substance, but within little time after, he moved towards the actualisation of the selfishly malignant dictum.

Immediately he was sworn into office in 2015, he dissolved the Permanent Secretaries the outgone government into which he was second citizen recruited. His reason for the dissolution was that the promotion and appointment was to hound his administration by Elechi who didn’t support his election as Governor. Just few days back, in April, 2023, he was found doing the same thing he accused his predecessor of doing to hound his administration. He appointed Permanent Secretaries and swore them into office despite the impending expiration of his tenure as Governor. Can we be wrong if we believe that he did that as landmine against his successor, just as he rightly complained about in 2015?

All the claims of giving the civil service a facelift by his administration are nothing short of fiction aimed at hoodwinking the reading and listening public. Gov. Umahi is a proud enemy of the Ebonyi civil servants. He has proven to be one at different, but repeated occasions. His celebration of the civil servants today was a step in widening the scope of his sycophantic administration that is also fraught with system mismanagement, miscarriage of priorities and brazen economic and financial malfeasance. It’s public knowledge that in the employ of the Ebonyi State Government under David Umahi, only nine medical doctors exist. This is a man beating his chest for achieving empty feats in the civil service system.
For civil servants in Ebonyi State, the past seven years was a waste in their service lives. To them, there was no system of civil service in Ebonyi State. They were more like employees undergoing probation. It’s public knowledge that civil servants in the state cannot pay fees for their undergraduate wards. The direct example of Umahi’s malevolence towards civil servants is the dearth and chauvinistic condescension of the Ebonyi State University and College of Education, Ikwo from higher institutions to upgraded VIP secondary schools. Academic and nonacademic workers in these institutions of higher studies have been owed several batches of salaries. Commensurate subvention mechanism for higher institutions in the state fizzled out at the expiration of the Chief Martin Elechi administration.
To further punctuate his aloofness for welfare and institutional development and management, Gov. David Umahi appointed a practical politician, former Deputy Governor of Ebonyi State, Professor Chigozie Ogbu as Vice Chancellor of the Ebonyi State University, office he currently holds. Why did he appoint him Vice Chancellor? He did that so he could help him weather the effectiveness of the institution’s labour force and pin their mouths to the woods against agitation for subvention, sundry rights and privileges. He has excellently achieved that as the man he appointed VC is a septuagenarian who became a Professor outside academic practice, but for medical proficiency outside Nigeria. He had contested elections in different election years.

In conclusion, Gov. David Umahi is the greatest enemy and progenitor of the nascent poverty index that has enveloped the civil servants in Ebonyi State and as such, lacks a fertile moral reckoning to boast about overseeing a civil service system that has blossomed from strength to strength. As the Government of Umahi winds down and suanters into history, posterity will remember the man behind the administration – David Umahi as one in whose arms the baby of the civil service system of Ebonyi State died. His reign will be remembered for numerous ills tailored to score selfish goals. Indeed, it’ll go down in history that during the reign of Gov. David Umahi, the Ebonyi salt lost its taste in the meals of sterling governance as regards civil service and general welfare mechanism for citizens and labour structure in Ebonyi State!

Authored by:

Nwoba Chika Nwoba, PDP Publicity Secretary, Ebonyi State.