Abia state Governor, Theodore Orji, who disclosed this at the state capital, Umuahia, over the weekend, however, decried the current high N3.5 billion used to pay workers’ salaries monthly, saying the trend had been a pain in the neck of most states in the country.
He stated that although the N50 billion would help to galvanise the state to regain its lost industrialised image and restore investors in the area of business, lives and security, the state government had embarked on aggressive Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) drive to boost its lean finances to sustain the ongoing developmental strides across the state.
Fielding questions from the press, Orji stated that his administration had no plans to source funds from the capital market through bond issuance but explained that government was able to prudently manage its scarce resources and would not want to saddle incoming administrations with debts.
According to him, “it is unfortunate that we spend as much as N3.5 billion to N3.6 billion every month to pay salaries. Remember too, that we have to pay the civil servants (although) many of them are not productive, but we have to sustain them and their families because we are a government.
“The state cannot continue like this. It must definitely find other ways to generate funds because we presently receive between N4.5 to N4.7 billion monthly from the federation account for the provision of infrastructure. Things don’t work like that,” the governor added.
He further argued that for rapid transformation to take place, the government decided to embark on massive IGR drive to increase its revenue base, stressing that it was gratifying to note that the move was yielding positive result.
On the payment of minimum wage, the governor explained that Abia State was labour-friendly, adding that it was only in the state that civil servants were paid as much as N20,500 minimum wage as against the N18,000 that was approved.
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