President Buhari Approves N400bn For Unpaid Workers' Salaries

At an extra-ordinary meeting of the Federation Account Allocation Committee held on Monday, President Muhammadu Buhari, approved over N400 billion as an intervention fund to end the lingering crisis of unpaid workers’ salaries. The relief package also includes about N300 billion soft loan for states to access for purpose of paying backlog salaries.

About $2.1 billion (N413.7 billion) of the money was said to be sourced from the recent Liquefied Natural Gas proceeds to the Federation Account.Central Bank-packaged special intervention fund that will offer financing to the states, ranging from between N250 billion to N300 billion is another source of the fund, which would take care of the soft loan available to states to access.

Also part of the intervention is a debt relief program proposed by the Debt Management Office, which will help states restructure their commercial loans currently put at over N660 billion and extend the life span of such loans while reducing their debt-servicing expenditures.

The CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele informed State Governments that the Federal Government was worried about the inability of some States to meet their obligation to their workers in the area of monthly wages. He noted that the inability of most states to pay salaries was due to the huge debt hanging on their necks.

The CBN Governor also informed the States that the apex bank was willing to assist such States in restructuring the loans owed the commercial banks.