Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has blamed the immediate past administration in the state for the continuous reduction in statutory allocations coming to the state from the federation account.
He also blamed the general economic recession in the country for the poor financial status of the state.
Civil servants in Ekiti State on Wednesday embarked on an indefinite strike over government’s inability to pay five months salary arrears and for failing to refund deductions made from their December 2015 salaries amounting to N512million.
However Gov. Fayose at the weekend faulted the workers’ decision to embark on strike saying it was not the solution to the poor resources available to the government, which led to irregular payment of salary in the last few months.
“For the April allocation shared in May, we got N752 million, while our wage bill is N2.6 billion monthly”, he explained.
“The previous month we got a little over N1 billion and that has been the trend since last year.
“We have had to combine two monthly allocations to be able to pay a month salary, but since the beginning of this year, it is that three allocations are not even enough to pay a month salary.
“When you compare what we got from January to May, 2015 and what we got in the same period this year, we have a shortfall of over N6 billion.
“Some are talking about our internally-generated revenue, there is nothing to hide. All the records are there for all to see and I have always told labour leaders to go and verify. The highest we have recorded is N302 million a month. There was a month we had N181 million”.
The governor noted that since he assumed office nearly two years ago, he had consulted with a committee of stakeholders made up of Labour leaders every month the allocation papers arrive from Abuja, noting that the committee had been responsible for sharing the allocation.
“If I am not hiding anything from labour leaders and workers, I expect them to understand. I feel their pain, but there is a limit to what I can do in this type of situation”, he noted.
Governor Fayose said the economic situation of the state was worsened by the indiscriminate borrowing of the Fayemi administration.
“The N25 billion they raised from the capital market, the nearly N30 billion commercial loans, the UBEC, water scheme, fertilizer and other loans they incurred, led to the deduction of about N1 billion from our allocations monthly,” he highlighted.
“Where were the labour and their leaders when they were borrowing all these monies? I reiterate again that no administration should be allowed to borrow beyond its tenure”.
On the staff audit conducted by the government last year, Mr. Fayose said 315 ghost workers were detected through the exercise and that the report would soon be made public.
