We call on the governor of Anambra State Peter Obi to pay the health and judicial; workers their accumulated salary or resign from office along with his health commissioner Mr Amobi Ilika,and the Attorney General/Commissioner of Justice as the state cannot afford to return to the situation it was before 2003.
It is bad enough that the state government allowed the key sectors-health and judiciary- to go through untold decay in the past six months, during which the people of Anambra State relied on Delta, Enugu and Imo states for key health services like BCG injection for babies, affordable morgues and post-natal inoculation for mothers and the state’s criminal activities and injustice rose sharply because there there were no courts.
But it is worse that the state governor cannot pay in part or whole the accumulated salary two weeks after the health workers strikes were partially called off and six weeks after the judicial staff resumed work.
ACN will not be surprised if these salaries have been piled up in private accounts of insiders and collaborators of the inept government in Awka, targeting corrupt influence of future elctions, rather than letting the money work for Anambra. We are also surprised that the state government would rather spend ample time grandstanding with the United Nations on a security matter at the purview of the federal government than thinking strategically to deal with issues dear to the heart of Anambra state.
If the current situation is to be acceptable to the long-suffering Anambra people, then we need to apologise to Dr Chinwoke Mbadinuju for all the invectives poured on his administration by the old and the young; the high and the mighty in the wake of owing salaries to workers in 2002.
We take this opportunity to appeal and challenge simultaneously that Governor Obi should not allow the situation to degenerate beyond current levels, as every labourer deserves his wages.
As a peep into the future of the state which is smarting from celebrations of its 20th birthday, the APGA government of Anambra State is invited to elucidate with facts and figures how the much trumpeted ANIDS programme of their government has placed the internally generated revenue of the state government on the path of growth in the last five years.
Hence they should explain to Ndi Anambra, why we should again be discussing basics like salary, stabilised in 2003, instead of the quantum leap of development that this poorly governed state desires and deserves.
Okelo Madukaife
State Publicity Secretary, ACN Anambra
