$2 billion bailout for Nigerian states to pay workers

The President okayed a three-pronged relief package including sharing of fresh allocations, granting of soft loans and restructuring of states’ debt-servicing payments.

Respite will this week come the way of states owing salaries and others, as President Muhammadu Buhari has approved a bailout, Daily Sun can authoritatively reveal.

“Furthermore, we expect President Buhari’s APC administration as direct beneficiary of this savings initiated by past PDP administrations to appreciate the strategic importance of always saving for rainy days and as such guarantee prudent and transparent management of the nation’s resources now under its care”. This would be a soft loan available to states to access for the purposes of paying backlog of salaries.

Buhari has accused his predecessor Goodluck Jonathan’s government of leaving the treasury “virtually empty” and promised to clear the rot in the system.

Media reports last month say no fewer than 12 of the 36 states of the federation are facing hard times as the salaries they owe their workers are approximately N110bn.

This third option, by extending the commercial loans of the states, would more funds available to the state governments that would otherwise have been removed at source by the banks.

According to sources, the President took the decision to boost the purchasing power of Nigerians, especially average and low-income earners, and to reflate the economy.

“Furthermore, President Buhari has now reviewed and approved the package in his bid to intervene and alleviate the suffering of workers some of whom have not been paid for over ten months”, the sources said.

At an extra-ordinary meeting of the federation account allocation committee held on Monday, Godwin Emefiele, governor of CBN, informed state governments that the federal government was anxious about the inability of some states to meet their obligation to their workers.

There are also employees of the federal government whose salaries have are back logged; the package is expected to address those cases as well.

The bailout package, which the National Economic Council discussed last week, was designed specifically for workers, some of whom have not been paid for more than 10 months, according to Nigerian newspaper Vanguard.