Okorocha denies bloated cabinet, sacking 10,000 workers

Gov. Rochas Okorocha (Imo)

GOVERNOR Rochas Okorocha of Imo State has denied appointing a bloated cabinet of 250 officials and sacking 10,000 workers in the state.

Speaking with The Guardian in Lagos yesterday, the Special Assistant on Media to the governor, Chinedu Offor, said that what people referred to as a bloated cabinet was a group of volunteers who agreed to wok for the government and were formed into various committees. “It is unfortunate that people simply saw the list of the cabinet members and without asking questions went to the press and started to cry bloated cabinet,” he said.

He said Imo State had the smallest cabinet where the deputy governor was also acting as Commissioner for Works. “People are volunteering to work for the state but people muddled up the numbers of those that were working on volunteer basis with those on government payroll,” he said.

He added: “These people are not government appointees. Their names are just on the list to help the government. They are not government employees neither are they on payroll. They are people who came out to say they love the government and wanted to contribute their quotas to the government of Governor Okorocha.

Immediately the committees are done with their various assignments, they will be dissolved. Before, the jobs of the committees were given to consultants and contractors but they are being done free by the committees.”

Offor also debunked the allegation that Okorocha sacked over 10,000 workers.

According to him: “This is not true. The issue is that the former administration was supposed to create jobs but it failed and two weeks to the expiration of the government, it announced that it would offer 10,000 jobs. Young people without jobs were asked to go and pay a certain amount of money in banks before they would get the jobs. The jobs were not in the budget in the first place and secondly we discovered that names of people living in London are on the list, including names of old people and others. We also discovered that some people went as far as paying over N200,000 or more to get their names on the list. That is what the governor said, that he couldn’t allow this. But people misunderstand him and claim that he sacked workers.”

SOURCE: Guardian Newspaper Nigeria 8 August 2011.  
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