Speaker links nonpayment of salary to servicing of past loans with N840m monthly

Kogoi state House of Assembly speaker, Matthew Kolawole has expressed concern that one of the major obstacles to regular payment of salary in the state is due to the issue of loans and debt servicing.

Kolawole who made the disclosure yesterday during a media parley with members of the Correspondents’ Chapel of Kogi Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Lokoja, indicated that the state government is servicing inherited loans with N840 million monthly from its statutory allocations, which he said had adversely affected the payment of salaries to government workers and general development in the state. According to him, the state inherited huge debts from loans obtained by previous administrations.

He pointed out that the loans accrued during the past administration of former Governor Idris Wada and was paying about N700 million monthly debt at inception but increased to N840 Million monthly with loans obtained by the present administration.

The speaker said that while the Gov. Yahaya Bello’s administration inherited four months’ salary arrears owed to state government workers, local government workers are owed about 34 months arrears. He added that while the immediate past administration paid between 25 and 30 per cent of local government workers salaries, the present administration was paying 65 per cent and was currently working to clear all outstanding salaries to state government workers in the next two months.The speaker held that it was not easy to run a state and Bello had tried his best and would continue to do his best to uplift the state.