By Samuel Itsede
Following nine months of unpaid salaries for the judiciary staff of Kogi state, a director and two judges were reported to have succumbed to the cold hands of death for their inability to offset medical bill of their ailment.
The death toll in the judiciary of Kogi state due to 9-month unpaid salaries which has sent in palpable tension among the judiciary workers and concerned citizenry includes, Mr. Zekery Aguye, a Magistrate and Deputy Chief Registrar (Litigation), Mr. Benjamin Ameloko, an Area Court Judge and Mr. Isah Salifu, a member of the Upper Area Court.
It was gathered that Mr. Zekery Aguye, a Magistrate and Deputy Chief Registrar (Litigation), died after a protracted illness over prostrate cancer at the National Hospital, Abuja, where he was initially being treated before he was forced to discontinue the treatment due to his inability to pay his medical bills.
According to Mr Yahaya Adamu, the Chief Registrar of the state High Court, Late Aguye remains one of the best hands in the state judiciary that was plucked out to eternity due to ugly incident of non payment of salaries that prevented him from servicing his medical bills to continue his treatment in order to prolong his life.
“I am very sorry to say that even as we subscribe to the will of Almighty Allah, who gives and takes life, you and I know certainly that sometimes there are deaths that are evitable. In this particular one, we feel it may have been further delayed if we had continued to manage his ailment as we were doing in the past before the judiciary was financially grounded”, he said.
Explaining further, he said Mr. Aguye’s ordeal started since two years ago when he was diagnosed of the disease, adding that with appropriate response and the concerted attention of the family,including the judiciary, the deceased received the right and necessary medical treatment.
“He was taken to the National Hospital, Abuja where he was treated to the extent that he even started driving his car by himself, having survived the critical period of the illness that also affected his spine”, he said.
The Chief Registrar further added that subsequently, the deceased was placed on drugs and periodic examinations by the hospital, which cost him between the sum of #400,000 and 500,000 monthly, depending on the result of the tests.
“By the grace of God and with the cooperation of the family and others we were coping with the management of the illness”, he said.
However, trouble was said to have set in with his treatment as from the middle of last year when Kogi State Judiciary started facing funding crises, where his salary, allowances and even the little assistance the judiciary was giving him ceased.
Adamu added that thereafter, “his care suddenly became the exclusive responsibility of the wife and the family alone, which could not meet up with his medical bills as recommended; he died in the process”.
” So, I will like to use this medium to ask well-meaning Nigerians to plead with His Excellency, Governor Yahaya Bello, to save Kogi judiciary and the state similar calamities, by releasing the judiciary funds so we can pay the nine months we are owing our workers.
“As I speak with you, many others are hospitalized, their children withdrawn from schools and some even homeless resulting from tenancy problems with their respective landlords” the Chief Registrar stressed .
In the same vein, the chairman of Kogi State chapter of the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN), Comrade Emmanuel Waniko, noted that Mr. Aguye’s death cannot be entirely divorced from the non-payment of judiciary workers’ salaries, since July 2018 which now amounts to nine months.
He said the union is still shocked and mourning the unexpected demise of the director, pointing out that nobody in the judiciary would have contemplated losing him now when he was believed to have survived the critical period of the illness and was recuperating.
Linking the death to the ongoing strike action, resulting from unpaid salaries, he recalled the content of the affidavit he deposed to in the case instituted against Governor Bello and the state’s Chief Judge, Hon. Justice Nasiru Ajanah, at the National Industrial Court by the union before this tragic incident.
In the said affidavit, he noted that “the staff of Kogi State Judiciary are hungry, sick and disillusioned without any hope as to know when the subventions will be released to pay thier salaries and emoluments”.
He added the state government has refused to pay judiciary its subventions and have demonstrated that neither the plight of judiciary workers nor the citizens suffering from the closure of the courts mattered by blatantly refusing to constitute any negotiation team with JUSUN as obtained in sane climes.
However, the Chairman said it has come to the right time that the state government realise that no amount of deliberate and systematic depletion of the Magistrates, Judges and workers of the judiciary would make the union succumb to subverting the judiciary, as an institution, to the whims and caprices of a single individual at the expense of the Nigerian constitution, the laws of Kogi State and the responsibilities given to the judiciary as the last hope of the common man.
“To us, it is the peak of insensitivity and man’s psychological oppression and inhumanity to man when you owe somebody his legitimate due and you keep asking the person to tow a particular path before you will pay him! This, to us, is unacceptable especially when you know fully well that the path you have asked for is illegal and unknown to law.
“When you are the one that constituted the Judicial Service Commission that is saddled with the responsibility of constantly verifying the composition of the judiciary workers which it is doing periodically, how do you turn around to usurp that power from them?”, JUSUN expressed.
The state JUSUN chairman therefore pleaded that if truly, “monies amounting to several months salaries due to Kogi State Civil Servants working in the Judiciary are sitting in the banks” as said by His Excellency, he should kindly order the payment of judiciary subventions to avoid further agonies”.
