Paris Club refund: Pressure on governors

IN spite of the ecstasy that greeted the Federal Government’s release of N522 billion being the first tranche of London-Paris Clubs loan refund to the states in December last year, President Muhammadu Buhari’s recent directive that the second tranche of the fund should be released without further delay is now mired in controversy.

The President had at the National Economic Council meeting in Abuja on Thursday, March 16, directed the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, and the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, to implement the instruction “appropriately and with dispatch.”

The amount to be refunded to the states in the second tranche is reportedly about N500 billion.

President Buhari had premised his directive on the need for the states to be able to settle backlogs of unpaid salaries and pension arrears of their workers. “One of these basic things is the issue of salaries. It is most important that workers are able to feed their families, pay rent and school fees, then other things can follow,” the President was quoted to have said via a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu.

But rather than jubilate over the development, Nigerian workers appear to be disapproving of any further disbursement of the fund to the states presently. The leadership of both the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) had expressed reservations over how the initial refund was spent by the state governors and were therefore circumspect over the release of further refunds.

The workers’ unions urged the Federal Government to withhold the funds until it must have investigated how the governors expended the initial refund.

President of the TUC, Mr. Baka Kaigama, in an interview with Sunday Sun, lamented that despite the release of money meant for the payment of salaries, most workers had not been fully paid.

The Sun, March 26, 2017

 

 

RipplesNigeria ….without borders, without fears

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now