Kwara State governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, yesterday
gave a fresh insight into the bail out given the 36 states of the federation by
the federal government, saying it was not meant to pay outstanding salaries and
allowances being owed workers and pensioner across the country as widely
believed.
Rather, he said the bailout was meant to restructure the
debts of states in various banks and financial institutions in order to assist
them have a lease of life to run their day-to-day administrations.
It would be recalled that the reported pains and agonies of
workers across the federation over problems of backlogs of unpaid salaries
prompted President Muhammadu Buhari to release the bailout.
In view of this, striking council workers in the state had
lately appealed to traditional rulers and other stakeholders in the state to
help appeal to the state government to use the bailout from the federal
government to offset their outstanding salaries and allowances.
But Governor Ahmed in his monthly personality programme,
tagged ,” Governor Explains”, held in Ilorin yesterday, explained:
“The bailout has to do with restructuring of existing loans because states had
not been able to pay salary of workers because of two things. First
, is that there is drop in federal allocation and second is that, states have
incurred debts that had made their cash flow to be under pressure.”
‘’This is because by the time they pay the loan, they would
have little left for normal business of governance. And you know that the loan
is first line charges and that is why states are under pressure.”
“However, the issue of bail out which people expect that
money will be sent to states from the federal government to pay salary and
other commitments, that is not how bailout is going to work.
‘’What we mean by bailout and what the federal government
meant by bailout is the restructure of existing loans that the states are owing
banks and other financial institutions in a manner that the pressure on
monthly payment is lessened so that it creates an additional head room for
states to do other financial obligations, Gov, Ahmed said.
