From Olanrewaju Lawal, Birnin Kebbi
Kebbi State Governor, Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, has announced that government would release N4 billion for the payment of pensioners’ entitlements as he signed N189.2 billion 2022 appropriation bill into law.
Bagudu, flanked by the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Muhammed Abubakar Lolo and other lawmakers, explained that the state would pay pensioners their outstanding before end of 2021.
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 in the next fiscal year.
Bagudu said: “Together with Kwaido committee on pension and gratuities, I have spoken also with NLC chairman on 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 comes to gratuities.
“We have about N4 billion, 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.”