Former governor of Katsina State, Alhaji Ibrahim Shehu Shema, has debunked claims that his administration left a debt bill of N42 billion. According to him, up to his last day in office last month, the state owed nobody.
This came following a disclosure, last week, by the Katsina State transition committee chairman, Mustapha Muhammad Inuwa, that the Shema administration left behind a debt of about N42 billion while submitting his committee’s report .
However, the Shema Media Team, in a release at the weekend, said the claim was the figment of the imagination of the committee chairman. The team, therefore, asked that it should be ignored as it was a pack of lies.
“Thirteen billion naira went missing between January and May 2015.”
Inuwa, who is also the Katsina State APC chairman, gave the breakdown of the debt to include N6.2 billion gratuity of local government staffs and N3.1 billion gratuity for state civil servants.
He said that other debt inherited included the foreign debt of about $78 million “part of which was inherited by the Shema administration”.
The transition committee chairman, added that part of the inherited debts were contractual liabilities and urged the state government to investigate further, especially the dubious transfer of over seven billion naira from the joint account of local governments to an account operated by the state chapter of Association of Local Government of Nigeria (ALGON).
Inuwa said the committee uncovered brazen embezzlement of government funds by the immediate past administration, noting “in SURE-P there is embezzlement of about N7.1 billion, SUBEB could not account for N556 million in seven months and the ministry of finance could not account for N13 billion from January to May 2015″.
