Kogi Guber: Allow our votes to count- NLC pleads with INEC

From Ahmad Ibrahim, Lokoja

The Kogi State Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Comrade Onuh Edoka has pleaded with the Independent Electoral Commission to allow the votes of the people of the state to count, ahead of the November governorship election.
He was addressing members of the organized labour at the Confluence Stadium in Lokoja yesterday, during the commemoration of this year’s Workers’Day celebration.
He pointed out that the people of the stated have decided to put their destiny in their own hands, asserting that if the votes of the people were allowed to count, the organized labour would decide who governs the state in the next political dispensation.
He further stressed the need for the members of the NLC in the state to be wary of politicians who are always pursuing their selfish interests, even as he called on the state governor, alumni Yahaya Bello, to settle all workers’ entitlements, to enable them stand by him in the coming election.
The labour leader therefore called on the state government to settle the arrears of workers% salaries before it is too late, disclosing that the organized labour might be forced to hit the streets if nothing was done to resolve the matter.
He insisted that the state government is owing between seven to thirty months, depending on when some workers were cleared by the screening committee, revealing further that the immediate past administration of Captain Idris Wada was owing only two months when he left the office in January, 2016.
In her speech, the secretary to the state government, Mrs Folashade Ayoade Arike, who represented the state governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, averred that the workers kept the engine of governance moving, and appreciated them for their contributions to the growth of the state.
She disclosed that the government was owing about five months salaries, insisting that only those who had problems during the screening exercise were being owed more than five months, promising however to sit with organized labour to fashion out modalities for the newly approved minimum wage for the workforce.