From Olanrewaju Lawal, Birnin Kebbi
Kebbi State Governor Abubakar Atiku Bagudu has announced that the state government would release N4 billion for the payment of pensioners entitlements as he signed the N189.2 billion 2022 appropriation bill into law.
Governor Bagudu, who disclosed this while signing the Budget at the Government House, Birnin Kebbi alongside the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Alhaji Muhammed Abubakar Lolo, and other lawmakers, explained that the state would pay pensioners their outstanding before the end of the year 2021.
It could be recalled that the Governor presented the budget on November 18 with N61.451 billion allocated for recurrent expenditure, N128.18 billion for capital expenditure respectively, and the state targeted N14.249 billion Internal Generated Revenue (IGR) in the next fiscal year.
Speaking during the signing of the budget, Bagudu said: ‘Together with Kwaido committee on Pension and gratuities, I have spoken also with NLC Chairman about how to resolve all our challenges. And we are working with the House which has been supporting us in this because we are still having challenges in terms of data gathering when it’s come to gratuities.’We have about N4 billion in our account as I am speaking now which we are ready to release before the end of the year. We cannot release the money when the data to be used for the payments of the money is going to be problematic.
‘Because, the last payment we did early this year, the committee themselves, when we interrogated the that we don’t trust these data. They came out two weeks after that they have achieved the reduction of about N470 million.
‘So, we have N4 billion in our account already and as soon as we are comfortable with what we are doing, we would release the money,’ he said.
While commending the House of Assembly over the passage of the budget a day earlier before the National Assembly passed their budget, Bagudu noted that the performance of the budget has been improving stressed that the state was ranked the best by the Independent Transparency Agency and Accountability.
According to him, ‘the highest reward in this category is 7 million dollars and six states were in the second category of 6 million dollars which Kebbibstatw fall among. And the Commissioner for finance has told me that Kebbi State account has been credited with $6 million.’
Governor Bagudu also disclosed that in the last few weeks, publications by Transparency Accountability have rated Kebbi state with the lowest recurrent expenditure along with other five states in Nigeria.
He noted that both local and international organizations have been coming to the state due to the track records and achievements in the various sectors stressed that, all these are attracting huge investment to the state.
Earlier, Kebbi State House of Assembly, Alhaji Muhammed Abubakar Lolo, assured the governor and the people of the state that the House would continue to work assiduously with the executive to ensure the state’s progress and development rapidly.