ALERT: Osun state will NOT pay March salaries

From all indications, the Osun state government will be unable to pay the March salaries of its workers, as the state only got N6.23 million in federal allocation for the month.

This is far below the N56 million it received in September 2015. Rauf Aregbesola, governor of the state, has said the sum will not even be enough to pay electricity bills for the state secretariat.

“Money coming from the Federation Account has dipped seri­ously and our hope for survival is in our hands; what our forefathers lived on was agriculture,” Aregbesola said back in September 2015.

“For September, our state got N55.8 million. The money we received cannot pay for the power supply by Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) that we use at the state Secretariat monthly.”

According to the accountant-general of the federation, the state got a gross statutory allocation of N1.677 billion for February, slightly above the allocation for Ekiti, Ebonyi, Kwara and Bayelsa.

Osun also got N19.418 million and N726.1 million from the exchange rate gain and value added tax, resulting in a total gross amount of N2.423 billion for the month.

The total allocation for Osun was seen to be higher than Nasarawa, Kwara, Gombe, Ekiti and Ebonyi.

However, with the removal of the N70.989 million, N945.881 million and N1.400 billion in external debt, Irrevocable Standing Payment Order (ISPO), and other debts, the state was left with a net allocation of N6.23 million.

With a wage bill of over N2.6 billion, the net allocation of N6.23 million would do next to nothing in the southwestern state with meagre internally generated revenue (IGR).

Every other state of the federation had a minimum net allocation of N1 billion.

Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Ekiti, Kwara, Gombe, Nasarawa, had a net allocation of N2.984 billion, N2.167 billion, N1.377 billion, N1.815 billion, N2.300 billion, N2.169 billion respectively.

With a wage bill of N2.6 billion, Ekiti, like Osun, led by Ayodele Fayose, may also have problems meeting its wage obligations.

On the high end, Akwa Ibom, Delta, Lagos and Rivers state got N8.557 billion, N6.062 billion, N6.612 billion and N5.427 billion respectively.