Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State says the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led federal government has decided not to retrench workers in view of its policy to find ways of generating and creating employment.
Ajimobi said this yesterday at the APC national secretariat in Abuja while reacting to a question on the last visit of the Progressives Governors’ Forum to President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa.

“In other clime, you should adjust your income and adjust your labour force. If you cannot pay everybody, then you should reduce them or you should reduce salaries. But because we are a government that believes in generating and creating employment, we refuse to do the most appropriate thing to do. So, we now decide that, instead of retrenching, we should restructure,” said the governor.

He said the Oyo State Government could not meet up with its monthly wage bill of about N5.2 billion when its total income from the federal allocation stood at about N2.2billion.
He, however, said that the current economic crisis in Nigeria was a global issue, saying “all over the world, there has been technical recession.”
The governor said the scenario affected the government’s ability to meet its obligations, including the payment of salaries, contractual agreements and projects execution among others.

He berated the level of corruption in Nigeria saying, “Corruption is more than just taking money. It is attitudinal. Sometimes, you can even enlarge it to mean basically indiscipline, inability to control yourself, to discipline yourself against the selfish tendencies of wanting to take what does not belong to you.
“A decision not to do your job is corruption, taking salaries monthly and not coming to work and coming to work and being idle is corruption,” he added.