Chairman of Oyo State council of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Comrade Bosun Olabiyi-Agoro, said the governor of Oyo State, ‘Seyi Makinde, has put the labour leaders in the state in a difficult situation.
Olabiyi-Agoro, who disclosed this in an interview with The People’s Verdict, said Makinde’s performance had made it difficult for labour leaders to be critical of his administration.
The TUC chairman said, “It has been very difficult for us as labour leaders to speak about this government, as led by Engr ‘Seyi Makinde, without sounding as if we are his hype men. He has been wonderful, he has been magnanimous. He has been good. This is not far-fetched going by the series of awards that he has been winning. Even before the awards, the NBS (National Bureau of Statistics) came out in September 2024 and stated categorically that Oyo State Government is the number one labour-friendly state in Southern Nigeria and number two in the entire nation. That tells us what he has done and how much he has given into the welfare of workers in the state.”
Talking about the recruitment of different categories of workers by the state government, Olabiyi-Agoro said, “In his first term he recruited 5,000 teachers. Just at the beginning of his second term, SUBEB took in 7,000 teachers; TESCOM took in 7,500; 1,500 medical and health workers, comprising of doctors, nurses and others, were employed. Even in the schools, 3,000 non-teaching staff were recruited. Some ad-hoc staff in the local government, who were just casual workers, he regularised their employment and brought them into the mainstream of local government employment.
“Some staff that were thrown away before, he looked into their issue case by case and those that had good cases, he absorbed them back into the mainstream employment even with the promotion that they had missed while the issues were ongoing. There were some OYSADEP workers that were also regularised back into the mainstream of Oyo State employment. About 791 people were taken into the civil service; I am not talking about SUBEB or TESCOM now but the civil service. I can go on and on.
“That is why I said he has put us in a difficult position, though a positive one, because it is what we see that we are going to talk about. When there are issues, we shout but when there are no issues and we see things that are positive like this, in the same vein, we must say it so that people will know and others will be encouraged.”
The labour leader also lauded the governor for taking the payment of workers’ wages seriously.
He said, “I make bold to say that Governor Seyi Makinde has laid a foundation of which anyone that comes after him cannot afford to go lower, it will become an issue because Oyo State workers are already used to what he has given us already.
“Since he came into office six years ago, he has made sure that he pays salary on or before 25th of every month. That was not the narrative before. As far as we are concerned in Oyo State, it is something extraordinary to us. Yes, we have people who say that paying salaries is his basic duty to do. My question to those people is that when we had governors who were not doing that, what were we able to do to them? In many states, even in Oyo State, we had governors who were not paying regularly, governors who turned workers’ salaries into ajo (contribution) and were paying in bits, we were not able to do anything to them. So, we are very grateful for what he has done. He has promised us that until he leaves office, Oyo State workers will get their salaries on or before 25th of every month. He added 13th month salary to it and he has been paying.
When we had issues due to the removal of fuel subsidies and everybody was introducing wage awards, I can tell you that Oyo State was among the very few states that were religious with the wage award.”
The labour leader, however, noted that the governor’s commitment to workers’ welfare had not impaired the development of the state as the governor has also invested immensely in infrastructure development.
