Unpaid Salary: Submit Your Loan Details – CBN Tells State Govs

Following the ongoing crisis of inability to pay workers’ salaries by some states in the country, the Central Bank of Nigeria has asked state governments to furnish it with the details of their loan obligations by Wednesday at the latest.

The directive was issued by the Federal Ministry of Finance in a statement late Monday night.
According to the statement, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, Governor of CBN, gave the directive during an extra-ordinary meeting convened to share the revenue received from the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) to the three tiers of government.

The statement said N359,374,355,607.60 was collected by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and shared among the three tiers of government.

It said the Federal Government got N189,318,410,534.03 (52.68 per cent); the 36 states got N96, 024,827,818.35 (26.72 per cent), while the 774 local governments got N74,031,117,255.16 (20.60 per cent).
It also stated that at the emergency meeting chaired by Mrs. Anastasia Daniel-Nwaobia, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Finance, Emefiele informed the state governments that the Federal Government was worried about the inability of some of them to meet their obligations to their workers in terms of payment of monthly salaries.

The statement reads in part, “The CBN governor noted that the inability of most states to pay salaries was due to the huge debts hanging on their necks. Emefiele observed that most states were taking short term loans for long term projects and servicing their monthly obligations to the banks hampers cash flows, thereby restricting them from payment of salaries.

By Patrick Aigbokhan