The Kogi State Director-General for Media and Publicity, Mr. Kingsley Fanwo, has blamed former governors Idris Ibrahim (Ibro) and Captain Ibrahim Wada for the inability of the present administration in the state to regularly pay workers’ salaries.
Fanwo told News Agency of Nigeria that the two past administrations committed the state to monthly loan servicing burden of about N500 million, which leaves it with little or nothing to pay workers salary.
He said that the most painful aspect of the debt burden was that the projects for which the bulk of the loans were taken were either never done, or abandoned.
“We repay between N400m and N500m monthly as loans that add no value to the state. These loans were taken by the last two administrations and some of them were invested on projects that were never completed”, Fanwo lamented.
According to him, even the N200m collected from the Central Bank for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises development vanished along the way.
“There is no record of anybody given loan and now, we are repaying”, he said, adding; “It is increasingly difficult to muster enough resources to pay salary regularly.”
The DG denied allegations that workers were being owed 24 months’ salary however restated the commitment of the Governor Yahaya Bello administration to the payment of workers salaries, even if it has to come in arrears.
