OPINION: What’s Next In Line Of The Lies Now That ‘The Bailout Mask’ Is Unveiled?

On Wednesday, the leadership of workers’ unions and Osun government signed an MoU, putting the hues and cries about salaries of workers in Osun to rest. I dont want to write on the aspect of the fact that the quagmire that orchestrated the salary issues is not limited to Osun. I also don’t want to write that that is why all the states in the country but a few took the bailout fund aimed at settling the salary issue.
This piece is targeted at ‘speaking at’ the clauses in the document that various representatives of workers in the state and government agreed to go by.
The document, titled MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING (MOU) BETWEEN THE STATE GOVERNMENT OF OSUN AND THE COMMITTEE INAUGURATED ON DISBURSEMENT OF BAILOUT LOAN has two main clauses; vis: . Disbursement of Bailout Loan and 2. Subsequent Payment of Salaries.
Basically what both parties agreed upon is that government should systematically disburse the bailout loan to cover the payment of outstanding salaries. See details below.
However, the most interesting aspect of the agreement kind of tries to answer the question- “what next after now?”. How would government be able to pay workers’ salaries after the bailout fund had been exhausted. This question is necessary particularly because everybody, including Government and Labour now recognize “that current national challenge resulting from dwindling Federation Revenue will continue to affect the payment of salaries, wages, pension, etc, and critical expenditures of Government”. This realisation comes within the precinct of the fact that Osun would be left will a net of less than a billion Naira every month after deductions- including the bailout related ones.
Consequently, Osun workers, according to the MoU, have agreed “to work with government to increase the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) so as to increase the available revenue to be apportioned towards salaries, wages, pensions and other critical expenditures of Government” like infrastructure development, security, general welfare among others.
Immediate in this regard is that every adult in the state must now critically and effectively get involved in the development of our state by paying the minimum tax of N4,500 every year. And this is where this foregoing gets interesting.
In recent times, it has gotten crystal clear that some elements have vowed to be tireless in their plots of destruction. While the salary/bailout negotiation was underway some days ago, the undermining of the PDP was cristal clear. They engaged their various hands including some unsuspecting citizens of the state. They overwhelmed the social media and a number of their supporting newspapers and Omisore’s radio station in Ife to spin ridiculous lies. When they saw that their devilish wish failed, they resorted to physical assault. They mingled with some labour on Tuesday in Abere, asking that the meeting that was to usher in the Labour/government MoU that was signed today be disrupted.
The meeting was going on in Abere on Tuesday when they mingled with some unsuspecting union representatives to disrupt the negotiation meeting in Abere. But their plot failed. The genuine workers realized their evil plot and ‘the chaff was winnowed from the wheat’. The PDP agents then got angry that they have been discovered, believing that the media gave them in. So they started beating up media guys around, destroying their equipment. The matter is currently being handled at the police headquarters in Osogbo. They could not disrupt the meeting yesterday. So agreements were reached and subsequently signed today.
As the matter is now, one can simply pre-empt these harm of a group called PDP in Osun. They would be mapping out another sort of platform to disrupt the state. The immediate one now is that government has introduced an unbearable tax regime.
Hence, it is important to let the public know that the minimum tax (N4,500 per annum) is not unbearable, looking at it from the minimum affordability standard of life of the people.
Virtually every household in Osun today has at least a telephone set. The least amount of call credit that such household purchases to make phonecalls in a month is not less than four hundred Naira (N400). So, such household would have spent four thousand, eight hundred Naira (N4,800) between January and December. Hence it would be mischievous that Omisore’s PDP now describe the minimum tax of three hundred and seventy-two Naira (N372 per month) that the patriotic Osun people would invariably be paying per month for further development of roads, schools, other infrastructure as well as general development of the state as “huge”.
Osun workers and the entire good people of the state have now come to realise that the cries of the Omisore/PDP wailers are only meant to cause chaos. Even their friends now know that they are worst than a honest enemy.
Their antecedents would always reveal their plots anytime in time. They have pretended to love the masses during last governorship election, so they roamed markets during electioneering campaigns. After election where are they? Now they cried more than the bereaved as though they loved Osun workers. In actual fact they wished they could get what they lost last year August 9 through chaos. Nay!
Have you heard the latest spins of their lies? They said the Osun deputy governor ‘WAS’ dead.
Excerpts of the MoU
Subsequent Payment of Salaries
(I) Government and Labour recognized that the current national challenge resulting from dwindling Federation Revenue will continue to affect the payment of salaries, wages, pension, etc, and critical expenditures of Government,
(II) The Government and Labour agreed that whatsoever is available as net revenues accruing from Federation Accounts and Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) will be apportioned in such a way as to take care of wages, salaries, pensions and other critical expenditures required to run the machinery of government;
(III) The Labour agreed to work with government to increase the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) so as to increase the available revenue to be apportioned towards salaries ,wages, pensions and other critical expenditures of Government; and
(IV) That the agreement in B(I) above be experimented for a period of three (3) months in the first instance and be reviewed thereafter in line with financial reality on ground.
(V) That a standing Committee of Labour and Government representative be put in place immediately to ensure transparent implementation of B (II&III) above.