•We acted within the law – Ikpeazu
From Okey Sampson, Umuahia
Abia State governor-elect, Dr. Alex Otti has warned out-going government against employment racketeering going on in the state.
He claimed reports backed by empirical evidence showed “there’s presently a bazaar of illegal employment going on in different ministries and parastatals, with all the so-called employees being issued with backdated employment letters.”
In a statement by his media aide, Ferdinand Ekeoma, he described the recruitments as landmines for his incoming government even as he said the perpetrators were unpatriotic and selfish.
“We ordinarily would not have bothered to go beyond calling on the state government to take decisive actions against its agents and enablers of this heist since we have a duly constituted government with a running tenure that ends on May 29, 2023. However, we have it on good authority that senior government agents are culpable in this.
“For example, those in charge of the Abia State Universal Basic Education Board (ASUBEB) in the state are directly involved in the fake recruitment which saw dozens of people troop in and out of ASUBEC on March 28, 2023 with the false assumption that they have been employed.
“This action which is geared towards laying a needless landmine for the incoming government of Alex Otti, has shown how unpatriotic and selfish the perpetrators are. It has also shown how brazenly audacious some political actors could be in advancing selfish political agenda that retards development and harms the interest of the generality of the people.”
Otti called on all those involved in the illegality, especially workers in Abia State Civil Service, to back out of it.
However, Governor Okezie Ikpeazu has denied knowledge of such racketeering, insisting that if agency of government employed any Abian, it did so within the ambits of the law.
His Chief Press Secretary, Onyebuchi Ememanka, quoted the governor as saying he was not aware of any form of employment racketeering in the state public service.
Ikpeazu said if by any measure the state government offered employment to Abians, there was nothing illegal about it.