Gov. Bassey Otu
By Emma Una
Cross River State Governor Bassey Otu has ordered the cancellation of thousands of unauthorised appointments into the local government service by the Local Government Service Commission which was sacked earlier in the year.
A statement by the Secretary to State Government, Professor Anthony Owan Eno, on Wednesday evening said the recruitments carried out by the sacked commission were unauthorised, illegal and not in compliance with the state’s civil service rules.
“Following the submission of the Report of the Panel of Inquiry into the Recent Local Government Recruitment Exercise and having carefully considered the issues raised, investigations conducted and recommendations made by the Panel, the Cross River State Government has taken the following decisions: The recruitment carried out by the defunct Local Government Service Commission between 2024/2025 was fundamentally flawed; lacking in legitimacy and fraught with absence of executive approvals, high-scale and widespread job racketeering, commercialisation of employment slots, institutional complicity, ineptitude and breach of public service ethics. The entire exercise therefore in the face of non-transparency, absence of accountability and non-compliance with extant laws and financial regulations, remains invalidated and cancelled,” the statement said.
