SIR: I read with dismay a media report in the dailies that the Osogbo branch of a Pentecostal church has opened a food basket for Osun workers who are going through hard times occasioned by the delay in payment of their salaries by the state government of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. Although the church asked its members and the public to contribute to the basket, a later report claimed that the call has been largely unheeded.
Around the same time, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state also charged the governor to sell the state’s security patrol helicopter and use the proceeds to pay workers salaries. How can any sane person ask that a security patrol instrument be sold?
Randomly, we hear the voices of other miserable comforters shedding crocodile tears for the workers, in a false show of pity.
It is strange and regrettable that a church will lend itself so easily for political use. Jesus instructed us that when we give alms and render assistance to the poor, we should not let the right hand know what the left hand is doing. Why then would a church call a world press conference over helping the needy? For the records, I am aware that some churches in the state have been assisting civil servants since the salary problem began and have never publicised it. God sees and will give them their due reward. Christians must know that those who advertise their ‘good’ works for others to behold have no reward with God since they already received their reward from men.
How many of these emergency sympathisers are sincere? A lot of the people pretending to be concerned about workers are just using this crisis as a platform to attack the governor and score a cheap political point. They are actually praying secretly that the governor would never find the money to pay the workers so that they will use the failure to destroy the governor and his party politically. But they have failed because the governor will find the money and will pay; and the state will move forward.
Where were these people when the governor was paying workers 13th month salary for four consecutive years? Where were they when the governor increased pension from N200 million monthly to N530 million? Where were they when the governor resuscitated overseas training for senior civil servants and gave workers housing and car loans?
Where were they when the governor was paying salary on or before the 25th of every month?
These false sympathisers are just mocking the workers by pretending to be concerned about them. We must all know God will judge every intention of the heart, irrespective of what we say to the world and our fellow human being.
- Michael Ogundele,
Osogbo, Osun State