Tension Rises as Federal Workers Set to Lock Down OAGF Over Salary Slash

In response to the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation’s (OAGF) March 7 clarification that the Federal Government has no salary payment shortfalls in January and February 2025, the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council leadership has threatened to picket Nigeria’s Office of the Accountant General of the Federation over salary cuts and payments in January and February 2025.

The Council disagreed with the OAGF’s assertion that there is no shortfall in salary payment for the two months under review, as revealed in a statement on Monday by Olowoyo Gbenga, the National Secretary of JNPSNC.

The assertions made by the office of the Accountant General of the Federation, however, were deemed to be far from accurate by JNPSNC, a council composed entirely of federal employees.

According to him, the Nigerian government owes federal public servants “the six (6) months outstanding wage award comprising February 2024 – July 2024, which will cease for payment as a result of the agreement reached, which Alia stated that “payment of wage award will stop as soon as minimum wage payment commences” and minimum wage payments were expected to commence in the month of August 2024; the wage award payment is in line with a circular issued by the National Salaries, Wages, and Income Commission vide SWC.04/T/33 dated 19th October 2023.

“The national leadership of JNPSNC’s diligent study of monthly salary pay slips issued to a cross-section of federal workers in the months under reference indicated that there was nowhere it was stated that salary arrears arising from minimum wage was unambiguously inserted.”

“The claim that arrears of 25% and 35% is very ambiguous and tantamount to the figment imagination of the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation because there is an extant circular to the effect of this payment issued by the Office of the National Salaries, Income, and Wages Commission,” JNPSNC explained.

The council warned that to avert shutdown the salary of March should be paid in full.

“It is expedient to state that the payment of Peculiar Allowance, which was supposed to be 40 per cent of workers’ salaries was surreptitiously short-changed by the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation with abysmal payment, which does not commensurate with the actual percentage stipulated in the federal government circular issued during the former administration under former President Mohamadu Buhari.

“On the strength of the aforesaid, the office of the Accountant General of the Federation should, as a matter of urgency, do a thorough assessment of his claims correct the anomalies and pay correct salaries for federal workers in March 2025 alongside arrears of the mutilated salaries experienced by workers in January and February 2025.

“Without mincing words, failure on the part of the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation to do the needful by paying normal salaries in the month of March 2025 (and arrears of short payments that characterised the months of January and February 2025 salaries: workers will not hesitate to picket the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation in order to correct the unwarranted and unjustifiable salary cut,” the statement reads.