Our treasury is empty – Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari said yesterday that his administration had inherited an empty treasury from the government of Goodluck Jonathan.President Buhari’s comment came less than 24 hours before he meets 36 state governors some of who are coming for a bailout over unpaid salary arrears and debts running into hundreds of billions of naira.  The president […]

President Muhammadu Buhari said yesterday that his administration had inherited an empty treasury from the government of Goodluck Jonathan.
President Buhari’s comment came less than 24 hours before he meets 36 state governors some of who are coming for a bailout over unpaid salary arrears and debts running into hundreds of billions of naira. 
The president spoke at the Presidential Villa in Abuja yesterday while meeting with State House journalists on his first day at work in official residence.
The president described as disgraceful, the non-payment of federal and state civil servants’ salaries.
He said Nigeria should be in a position to pay civil servants if not for the poor management of the economy by past governments.
According to the president’s manifest for today seen by our correspondent, the meeting with the governors will take place at 10.00am inside the Council Chamber of the Presidential Villa.
The Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) resolved Wednesday to meet the president over heavy debt burden and backlog of unpaid salaries running into tens of billions of naira.
The chairman of the forum and governor of Zamfara State Abdulazeez Yari had told journalists after the meeting that state governors were not satisfied with the current “dwindling” state of the economy.
The governors initially had wanted an outright bailout but now they are expected to table requests for refund of monies spent on executing federal government projects in their states.
Yari said nearly all the states had accumulated huge debts of between $20bn to $50bn adding that Lagos State alone had a debt of more than $50bn.
He said some of these debts were incurred while executing federal projects that had not yet been settled.
“If (we) can get that, then, most of the issues can be solved”, Yari had said.
Osun state governor confirmed Sunday that his bankers had stopped granting further loans to his state after he accumulated loans totalling N24bn to pay salary arrears.
Kano: Next to Lagos in term of huge debt, is Kano state. While Lagos led the debt chart with N418bn, Kano followed with N294.5bn.
Our correspondent reports that like other states, Kano state does not owe its workers salaries. The May salaries of the workers were paid at the end of the month.
Former governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso left a debt of N294.5bn, N33bn of which was inherited from the administration of Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau.
A report presented by transition committee chaired by the deputy governor Professor Hafizu Abubakar showed that a total of 4,019 projects were completed by Kwankwaso’s administration during his four years in office.
The completed projects cost N140bn out of which N4.5bn is outstanding.  There are 2715 uncompleted projects worth N313bn, and N202.5bn have been paid leaving an outstanding balance of N105bn, he said.
According to Professor Abubakar the outstanding debt of ongoing joint projects of state and 44 local government areas stood at N117.8bn.
Benue: The Benue state government is estimated to owe its workers a total of N14.5bn as five months unpaid salaries.
The state’s current salary bill stands at N34.8bn per annum following a N2.9bn wage bill at the end of each month.
Former governor Gabriel Suswam’s government said he left behind a debt of N9.3bn.
However, Governor Samuel Ortom said that preliminary investigation showed that the Suswam’s administration owed over N90bn and not the N9.3bn which he stated in the handover document. Yet this sum excludes the outstanding salaries of civil servants as well as pensioners.
“While scrutinising the handover note, I discovered that the N9.3bn debt contained in the document is half the truth because preliminary investigation showed that we had N12bn salaries arrears outstanding including BSU staff.
“While the civil servants received their last pay in February, BSU was last paid in March. Pensioners are being owed since last year.
“Also, there is an outstanding payment of N18bn for contracts already executed while ongoing contracts amount to over N50bn. The total debt is over N90bn. This is the challenge I’m facing,” he said.
Ogun State: Statistics from the Debt Management Office (DMO) as at December 2014 indicated that Ogun state’s debt stood at $109,154,553.08 at $168 to the naira conversion.
As at May 31, this year Ogun state government was not owing civil servants, but it had issues with the deductions of pension remittance, union dues, bank repayments, which the government stood as guarantor to some workers.
The state chairman of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Comr. Akeem Ambali said the total amount of the deductions would be in the region N5.5bn.
He explained that as at March, when the governor paid 1.5 billion of the deductions, “we have about N3bn left and to add for the month of April, May and June, we should approximate the total deductions to be at N5.5bn,” Ambali told our Correspondent.
Ekiti: Ekiti state government owes all workers September 2014 to May 2015 salaries.
The September 2014 was inherited from the two months (August, September) salaries left unpaid by the former Governor Kayode Fayemi’s administration.
Fayose cleared August salary leaving September, and promised to pay when the finances of the state improves.
When Daily Trust asked a retired financial expert for his views as to what President Muhammadu Buhari and the Federal Government can do to accommodate the request of the state governors for help to pay the backlog of salaries he said, “I believe that too much of Federation Account money goes to the Federal Government, 52 percent. Part of the long term solution is to reduce the Federal Government’s share of the Federation Account and increase the proportion that goes to the states. In the short term the Federal Government can give soft loans to the states and insist on a clear program for revenue generation and fiscal reform that will improve their finances. The Federal Government should also pay to the states all verifiable debts including amounts stolen by NNPC.
“This cannot be done at a go but if it is accepted as a liability it can be used to extinguish the soft loans that are advanced to them now. The truth however is that without enhanced revenues and massive cost cutting both the Federal Government and the states are unviable. The Federal Government has been bankrupted by the Jonathan Administration and it has no money either.  The Central Bank of Nigeria needs to devalue our currency to make more naira available and bring in investors and thus cushion our reserves.”