Osun State governor, Rauf Aregbesola has hit out at Senator Ben Murray Bruce over his resolve to donate his wardrobe allowance to civil servants in Osun State.
Senator Ben Murray Bruce representing Bayelsa East had on Wednesday on his twitter handle wrote that he would donate his N506, 600(Five Hundred and Six Thousand Six Hundred Naira) wardrobe allowance, which he is entitled to annually as a senator to civil servants in Osun State who are being owed over 7-month salaries by the state government.
“I, Ben Murray Bruce, will not sit down idly, while my fellow citizens die because salaries have not been paid.
“As a first step, I am immediately donating my wardrobe allowance to unpaid workers in Osun state and widows in my Constituency.
“We are starting in Osun, but we will not end there. I will do as much to help workers who’ve not been paid in other states.
“I call on all my friends and followers on Twitter and Facebook to donate NON PERISHABLE food items for these our brothers in need.
“As soon as my wardrobe allowance is paid, I will divide it into 2. Half will be publicly given to the NLC Chairman Osun.
“The other half will be publicly given to the head of widows association in my community of Akasa,” Senator Ben Murray Bruce twitted.
However, the media mogul’s gesture of goodwill has not gone down well with Gov. Rauf Aregbesola who said Senator Ben Murray Bruce is playing politics with the plight of ordinary Nigerians.
In a statement signed by his media aide, Semiu Okanlawon, Gov. Rauf Aregbesola lambasted Senator Ben Murray Bruce for choosing to donate his wardrobe allowance to Osun State out of several states in the federation battling to pay workers’ salaries.
The statement reads in part: “It is saddening and tragic that Mr. Murray Bruce whom many had accorded a lot of respect is too early in the day joining the fray of politicisation and trivialising the salary issue affecting more than half of the states of the federation in this ridiculous manner.
“While Nigerians are in hot debate over the alleged jumbo pay and the mood of the country Murray Bruce seems to have turned the plight of Nigerian workers to a thing of an entertainment.
“Of all the states in the federation who are battling to pay salaries as a result of the precarious economic situation his party, the PDP threw Nigeria into why is it that it is Osun he wants to take his pay to?
“This is certainly playing to the gallery and nothing but a mockery in the faces of Nigerian workers and not only of Osun extraction. It is not only wicked but ungodly to play politics with the suffering of the people.
“If the Senator’s conscience tells him his pay is too high especially in the face of the prevailing economic predicament of Nigeria the most honourable thing to do is to lead a protest for reduction and not a self serving philanthropy only in the direction of Osun workers.”
It would be recalled that Winners’ Chapel in Osogbo, the Osun State capital, recently came to the aid of workers in the employ of the state government when the church shared out food stuffs and money to some of them.
