Impeccable sources within the Osun State Ministry of Finance have revealed to The Paradigm, real reason the state cannot pay workers salaries for the past six months.
Except sometime drastic actions are taken, the situation will continue for the next one year and more, The Paradigm can authoritatively confirm.
Government document shows the state received a net allocation of N111.3 billion between 2010 and 2014. However, the state wage bill far outweighs its income.
The state emoluments i.e. wages, salaries et al gulped N113.62 billion between the same period.
Osun state, a largely agrarian society, has a population of 4 million people according to the 2006 population census. However, only 1% of the population gulps 102% of the state’s allocation through its 40,000 strong civil service.
Except there is an increase from the federal government allocation, reduction of staff salary, or a drastic reduction of the state civil service, the government might not be able to pay salaries for a long time.
Recall that international prices of oil fell below $50, its lowest in the last seven 7 years, a situation which affected the Nigeria’s crude oil earnings and subsequently reduced the income accruing federating states.
The source told The Paradigm that “though the state has recording progress in augmenting it’s income base with a robust Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) drive, the returns from this is insufficient for funding the state civil service.”
The Paradigm learnt that the emoluments increase has been driven by arbitrary demand for Salary increase by unions without due consideration for commensurate increase in revenue.
For now, there seems to be no information on which direction the government will take to end this stalemate.
Source: The Paradigm
