12 States owe salaries despite bailout

•Kogi highest indebted with 15 months unpaid salaries

No fewer than 12 states are still owing their workers a backlog of salaries and allowances, despite double bailout funds from the Federal Government, with Kogi State owing as many as 15 months, Vanguard investigations have revealed.

Also on the list of heavily indebted states are Osun, 12 months; Kwara, 11; Bayelsa, 7; Ondo, 7; Ekiti, 6; and Oyo, 6. Others are Benue State, 4 months; Nasarawa State, 2; Abia, 2; Imo, 2; as well as several months of unpaid allowances and Ogun State, which owes over six months of unremitted deductions from workers’ salaries for cooperatives, union dues, among others. This revelation came as Organised Labour accused the Federal Government of owing civil servants a whopping N290 billion promotion arrears, lamenting that all efforts at making the government pay had not yielded any positive result.

The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN had ealier released a list of 19 out of the 36 states of the federation that have so far benefited from the N338 billion workers’ salary bailout package. The package has a 20-year repayment tenor for all states, except Ogun State, which opted for a 10 year tenor. The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC has said it will work with the Independent Corruption Practices and related offence Commission, ICPC to track the use of the bailout funds to ensure they are not diverted.

The states that benefited from the funds, which the NLC said it would monitor include:

Abia (N14.152bn)
Adamawa( N2.378bn)
Bauchi (N8.60bn)
Bayelsa (N12.85bn)
Benue(N28.013bn)
Borno(N7.680bn)
Cross River(N7.856bn)
Delta( N10.036bn)
Ebonyi(N4.063bn)
Edo(N3.167bn)
Ekiti (N9.604bn)
Enugu (N4.207bn)
Gombe (N16.459bn)
Imo (N26.806bn)
Kastina (N3.304bn)
Kebbi (N0.690bn)
Kogi (N50.842bn)
Kwara (N4.320bn)
Nasarawa (N8.317bn)
Niger (N4.306bn)
Ogun (N20.00bn)
Ondo (N14.686bn)
Osun(N34.988bn)
Oyo( N26.606bn )
Plateau (N5.357bn)
Sokoto (N10.093bn)
Zamfara (N10.02bn)