Bamigbola Gbolagunte, Akure

Former Ondo governor, Olusegun Mimiko, has disclosed his administration left N20 billion in the coffers of the state at its exit in February 2017.

Former commissioner for Information, Kayode Akinmade, in a statement, yesterday, said the Mimiko’s administration left N7.37 billion in the current account; N7.53 billion as fixed deposit; N1.2 billion in the MDGs account; $346,000 and 443,000 euro in the domiciliary account, including the N825 million Sure-P fund at the local government account!

He said the above amount, most of which came late into his tenure was to be used to offset owed salaries before the then accountant general made a curious disappearance.

“On figures listed as external debt, it is necessary to state the following: our administration did not incur any foreign debt in its eight years. Also, the external debt stock as at February 2017 was US49,958,268.49, which (if translated at 1 US $ = N305) is N15.23 billion. This external debt stock was inherited from previous administrations.

“Again, we did not contract any external loan for all of our eight years. Well aware of the fact that government is a continuum, we continued to service the debts, some of which spanned over 20 years.

“Internal debt profile, we aver, stood at N53.159 billion comprising mainly of salary bail out loan of N13.76 billion, Excess Crude Account loan N9.79 billion, CBN restructuring FG bond N4.13 billion, CBN budget support N7.5 billion and Ondo State seven-year bond of N17.6 billion.

“Of all the above listed indebtedness, only the Ondo State seven-year bond was directly incurred by our government to build major infrastructure across the state.

“We experienced the sad reality of salary arrears like almost all the states of the federation. That is why unpaid salaries for August 2016 to January 2017 was N32.40 billion, with N20.93 billion owed state government workers and N11.469 billion owed local government workers, including political appointees.

“Even at that, it must also be clear that we left office on February 24, 2017 while federal allocation for February 2017 salaries was received by the incumbent government on February 28, 2017. We could not have paid February salaries when we did not receive February allocation before exit,” he said.