GOVERNOR of Kaduna State Nasir El-Rufai has accused a governor of financially sponsoring the five-day warning strike in the state.
El Rufai said this on Wednesday during the meeting of the Nigerian Governors Forum, noting that his fellow governors refused to offer him support during the strike.
According to El Rufai, a governor, who he did not name, gave money to the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to organise the strike action.
“I would like to inform the forum that one of our colleagues, a state governor, actually gave the NLC money to come to Kaduna to do this because people think everything is politics. This is not politics. This is a monster that will consume all of us. It will not consume Kaduna I’m confident of that,” El Rufai said.
He further lamented that he was used to fighting his battles alone but he had expected an ‘unequivocal and unqualified support’ from the NGF.
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When El Rufai was reminded that the NGF released a statement concerning the strike, he said the NGF tried to ‘play both sides.’
The NLC had, on Monday, embarked on five- day warning strike over the sack of thousands of workers and refusal to pay entitlement to retrenched workers in the state.
El Rufai said the sacks were part of the government’s process to ‘rightsize’ the state’s civil service.
He condemned the strike action that lasted for three days before it was called off on Wednesday evening by the NLC chairman Ayuba Wabba. The NLC chairman said the strike was called off to give room for negotiations after the Federal Government waded in.
During the strike, lecturers of the Kaduna State University (KASU) and some nurses who joined the union in the action were also sacked by the governor.
Lukman Abolade is an Investigative reporter with The ICIR. Reach out to him via labolade@icirnigeria.org, on twitter @AboladeLAA and FB @Correction94