Governor Bello of Kogi

The Kogi Government said on Tuesday that it received N13.11 billion from the federation account between January and June.

The State’s Commissioner for Finance, Mr Idris Ashiru, disclosed this at a stakeholders meeting held in Lokoja Monday evening.

Ashiru said that the amount was N9 billion less that the N22.85billion that accrued to the state in the same period in 2015.

He said that the sharp drop in revenue had constituted a major barrier to the implementation of programmes, policies and payment of workers’ salary.

According to him, while the allocations to the state in May and June stood at N 2.01 billion and N 1.8 billion respectively, the workers monthly wage bill remains at N2.77 billion.

He, however, said that government was able to release running costs to ministries, agencies and departments up till May.

The commissioner said that workers in 45 MDAs had been paid between three months and four months salaries, since the inception of the present administration in January.

In his opening remarks, Gov. Yahaya Bello appealed to lecturers of the Kogi State University, who had been on strike for almost two months, to call off the strike in the interest of the students.

He said that he had met 80 per cent of their demands and wondered why the lecturers had remained adamant.

Present at the meeting were politicians, youths, bankers, lawyers, members of academic community, security agencies, state legislators, religious leaders, civil society groups, women groups and traditional rulers.

Meanwhile,  the committee set up by the State government on staff screening and verification  has discovered 9,720 ghost workers in the payroll of the state government.

The Chairman of the committee, Mr Jerry Agbaji, announced the development during a stakeholders meeting in Lokoja.

Agbaji said that the figures represented the number of workers in ministries and local governments who did not show up at all for the screening.

He said that the figure comprised of 4,060 state government workers, 3,054 teachers and 2,936 local government workers.

Agbaji, who is currently the acting permanent secretary in the ministry of information, arts and culture, said the committee screened more than 81,000 workers during the exercise.

He said that 22,272 workers in the 21 local government councils presented themselves for the screening while 22,608 primary school teachers submitted themselves for the exercise.

He said that the number of ghost workers would go up as many workers had issues ranging from forged certificates, double salary collection, bank verification number, fake letters of appointment and non-availability of bank statements, among others.

Also addressing the meeting, the Auditor-General in charge of local governments, Alhaji Ahmed Ododo said that the names of 40 unscreened workers were smuggled into the report.

Ododo, who chaired the backup committee to vet the report of the screening, explained that this anomaly and others discovered in the report showed that there were individuals bent on sabotaging the efforts of the government.

The auditor-general said that a member of staff of the College of Education, Ankpa, who had been in service for the past 39 years, was given a clean bill and asked to remain in service by the committee.

“Also in Kogi State University, there was a case of double employment where a man filled two forms signed by him and he was cleared.

“He is on the staff of the university and also on the staff of its teaching hospital. This man draws salaries amounting to N560,000 each from the two places,’’ he said.

Ododo said that the committee also discovered that the payroll of the Kogi State Polytechnic in Lokoja contained 1,200 non-existing workers, urging the government to raise an independent team to ascertain this and bring the perpetrators to book.

Earlier while declaring the meeting open, Gov. Bello said that it was called to lay bare the interim report of the screening committee.

He reiterated that the exercise was not to witch hunt anybody but to reposition the state’s civil service and get rid of ghost workers.

Bello appealed to the genuine workers to remain calm, saying that their outstanding salaries would be paid as soon as the exercise was concluded. (NAN)