Atiku Abubakar, the former vice president, has charged that the administration of President Bola Tinubu has not paid federal employees their full compensation awards.
He bemoaned how Tinubu’s decision to eliminate the gasoline subsidy on his first day in office had left the typical Nigerian struggling with hunger and inflation.
He maintained that the decision to eliminate the fuel subsidy was rash and careless, and that it has caused severe financial difficulty.
In a message posted on his X account on Sunday, Atiku charged that the current administration had broken its pledge to provide federal public personnel with a temporary wage award to lessen the impact of the elimination of subsidies.
The administration pledged to provide federal civil servants with a wage award as a short-term buffer until the conclusion of talks on a new national minimum wage in an effort to handle the self-inflicted problem.
“That promise has turned into a broken covenant, just like many others under this government,” he stated.
Atiku pointed out that the salary award was meant to act as a temporary solution while the government worked for ten months to agree on a new minimum wage.
It is implied that the federal government owes federal employees ten months’ worth of unpaid wages. However, just six months have been paid, and that too following a string of unmet promises and preventable hold-ups,” he stated.
He said that each employee owed ₦140,000, or ₦35,000 per month, for four months.
Atiku criticized the federal government for displaying “callous indifference and utter disdain for workers’ welfare,” while applauding several state administrations for managing labor issues appropriately.
Additionally, he denounced the ongoing imprisonment of labor activist Andrew Uche Emelieze, who was detained about two weeks ago for trying to plan a nonviolent demonstration against the unpaid pay awards.
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“The government has now turned to tyranny and the suppression of free speech instead of pursuing dialogue or keeping its promises,” he stated.
His only “crime” was advocating for state-abandoned workers.
Emelieze’s imprisonment “is an affront to democracy, a slap in the face of every Nigerian worker, and a chilling reminder of the authoritarian drift of the Tinubu administration,” according to Atiku, who demanded his immediate and unconditional release.
