Note on Salary Payments in Abia State

By John Okiyi Kalu

For the avoidance of doubt, we have elected LGA officials in Abia State. They receive allocations from the federation account and also generate revenues internally for their operations.

The current administration in Abia State, led by Governor Okezie Ikpeazu, does not and will not tamper with LGA allocations.

Governor Ikpeazu only advised against LGAs borrowing from commercial banks to fund salary payments, for obvious reasons.

Statutorily, the LGAs pay their workers, primary school teachers and LGA pensioners.

Similarly, Abia state govt does not pay salary of workers in parastatals like Abiapoly, Absuth etc. Parastatals are revenue generating units that are legally free to use their revenue to run their operations. The state govt only pay subventions to them to help bridge revenue inflow gaps, where there are such gaps.

State govts in Nigeria pay state workers (state MDAs) secondary school teachers and state pensioners.

Abia state govt already paid our MDAs December 2017 Salary and also paid N426m to secondary school teachers and N400m to state pensioners. (We are in the first week of January 2018.)

Teachers and pensioners will receive more payments in the coming days as the Labour led committee that is disbursing the N5.7b 3rd tranche Paris Club Refund complete their work. Governor Ikpeazu directed that N3.2b, out of the N5.7b, be used to augment salary payments, especially to teachers and pensioners in Abia State.

It should be recalled that Governor Okezie Ikpeazu authorized the payment of 100% of the second tranche of Paris Club Refund (N5.7b) to workers. He remains the only Governor in Nigeria that gave all the received second tranche refunds to workers.



Thank you.
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