Osun Workers And Oyetola’s Art Of Deception By Ibrahim Sarafa

In a meeting with labour leaders at his Bola Ige House office in November 2020, Governor Gboyega Oyetola made certain pronouncements that suggested the tough times faced by workers in the employment of the Osun state government were over. “Additionally, we have lifted the ban on Annual Salary Increment which was done in 2012. Embargo on promotions & conversions is also lifted with immediate effect. This is in fulfillment of our Administration’s pledge to give the welfare of our workers the deserved attention,” Oyetola who had a few days earlier announced the implementation of the minimum wage had disclosed at the meeting.

That was the perfect answer to the expectations of workers in the state and the excitement that follows the announcement explains it all. For nearly a decade, the All Progressive Congress-led administration was lackadaisical and even worse, brutish, about the welfare of workers in the state– causing stagnation and unnecessary loss of benefits to the workers.

And when Oyetola made that announcement, the perception among civil servants in the state was that he want to be different. But it turned out they were mistaken, or they were too concerned about exiting their unfavorable situations, that they can not see that they were simply being played as usual.

This reality was amplified by a recent event. At this year’s May Day celebration, Oyetola was quoted to have sanctioned certain demands of workers and the promoters of the governor went into a frenzy, flying all sorts of narratives that suggest he (Oyetola) was workers’ friendly. What it however really did is to remind workers of the 2020 pronouncements, and how it is almost the same as the new one.

The question that easily comes to mind is, what is Oyetola play here? On the surface, this will seem a hard nut to crack but the answer you need is right in the last three years Oyetola has been at the helm of the affair. Fair enough, Oyetola did inherit the mess but as an integral of the government that treated workers’ welfare with so much disdain, he can not be said to be free of blame either.

And instead of working to fix the mess, he is sustaining the same ideology that caused it all. To understand this better, you should move closer to workers in the state to have a feel of their silent frustrations. Oyetola is good with words and not putting them into action, a feature observers believe he uses to manipulate thoughts.

While he was campaigning to be Governor, he promised to offset the 30 months’ half salary owed to workers and pensioners by his predecessors. But nearly six months to the end of his four-year term, nothing is happening. In fact, he no longer talks about it and there is no assurance of any sort that he has the intention of doing anything about it.

Because resolving that issue and paying workers what was owed them would have shown he is truly concerned about workers’ welfare. Owing workers 15 months’ full salary is a whole lot and definitely bears on them, and a Governor who cares about them will do something about it before any other thing.

To make matter worse, several months of workers’ cooperative deductions by the government have been left unrefunded. What this has done to workers is huge and a senior official in a local government tried to capture the level of implications on workers in a recent chat as “too unbearable to imagine.”

The experience is not different with pension deductions, which government hardly remits to pension managers and as a consequence, put the future of a lot of civil servants in a state of uncertainty. But these and more welfare issues does not seem to interest Oyetola, probably, because they will easily give away his true intention.

Osun governorship election is two months away and Oyetola, considering that he wants to return to the office, may want to play a fast one on workers. Well, he is not the first to do so. In fact, Oyetola echoes a whole class of gimmicks, no less played on workers by his former boss, Rauf Aregbesola.

In his first term, Aregbesola projected a similar posture of being friendly to workers, which was reflected in the introduction of 13 month salary to them. But it was all a trick as workers were to soon find out for themselves how Aregbesola think of them after he got re-elected and it was an ugly experience.

Truth be told, the APC-led government has shown to be terrible when it comes to the welfare of workers and I don’t see anything changing with Oyetola. If anything, he has only strengthened that belief going by the trend of his failed promises to workers. I am not sure workers will be prepared to find out what awaits them, if like Aregbesola, Oyetola successfully tricked them into believing he truly cares for them.

*Ibrahim Sarafa writes from Iwo, Osun State. He can be reached via neyoclass09@gmail.com*

Disclaimer: This piece represents the opinion of the Writer not CityMirrorNews