Onimisi Alao, Yola
The citizens of Adamawa State, who have been battling the government of Ahmadu Fintiri for not recognizing them as workers owing to how they were recruited by the previous government, said Monday that the security agencies have joined the state government against them.
The people, who the Fintiri government officially disowned two weeks ago after accepting a White Paper report stating that they were not employed by the Jibrilla Bindow government with due regard to civil service procedure, vowed however that they would continue their demand for unpaid salaries.
The aggrieved citizens, led by Faisal Baba, who have insisted that they are genuine workers of the Adamawa State Government, scheduled a protest for Monday to demand a return to payroll and payment of their stopped salaries, said to have run to 10 months, but the police rose much earlier than the 9 am scheduled for the protest, and occupied the planned protest venues.
The police had mobilised by dawn and took up positions at Police Roundabout, House of Assembly Complex, and Government House Junction, the very places the aggrieved workers had chosen to stage their protest.
The protesters then gathered just before midday some hundreds of metres from Police Roundabout, where they addressed newsmen on the development.
Their leader, Faisal Baba said, “The security agencies in Adamawa State, the Commissioner of Police have compromised with the state government. This is mischief. They mobilised with their armoured tanks and occupied all our routes as if we were going for war.
“We were not going for war. We were only out to challenge the injustice that was done to us. The government has refused to pay our 10-month salaries, and now he has sent the security agents to block us from complaining.
“We listened to the elite who advised us to withdraw from this protest to avoid killings and the rest. But we will continue to pursue this thing until justice is done.”
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The Jibrilla Bindow government had employed Faisal and his colleagues, whose number Faisal now estimates to be 10,000, close to the end of that government, but the Fintiri government had immediately condemned the way the employment was carried out, and had not paid them any salary since then.
He set up an investigative committee which sealed their fate, coming up with a recommendation on the strength of which the state Executive Council (SEC) penultimate Wednesday announced that the civil service never recognised them, but that they could seek fresh employment within the service.
Both the police and DSS, getting to know of the plan for the Monday protest, had advised the estranged workers against it.
And the Police, reacting on Monday afternoon to the allegation of compromise, said the state police command had been against the protest plan from the beginning only because of its concern for security and public safety.
The state police spokesman, DSP Suleiman Nguroje, told newsmen, “We made deployment to see that nobody is molested. The police will not prevent anybody from exercising their fundamental human rights. The police presence was about protecting each and every one that participated.”
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