CBN Perfecting Release Of Bailout Loan To Clear Civil Servants’ Salaries Arrears
This was the highlight of a closed-doors meeting between Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum, Alhaji Abdulazeez Yari, Tuesday.
The duo had met behind closed-doors to discuss the modalities of the bailouts recently approved by the Federal Government for states.
The discussion was on the Central Bank-packaged special intervention fund approved by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The CBN intervention is meant to be a soft loan to be made available to states for the purposes of paying backlog of salaries.
It will be recalled that Buhari? had recently approved measures to clear the backlog of unpaid public sector salaries in many states including the sharing of the $2.1billion dividend paid to the Federation Account by the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Company
and a CBN-packaged special intervention fund that will offer financing to the states, ranging from N250 billion to N300 billion.
Fielding questions from State House correspondents at the end of the meeting with the Vice President, Yari who is also the Governor of Zamfara?, said the meeting was necessary in order to find out from him how far the government had gone on the CBN planned intervention.
He said from the briefing received from Osinbajo, it was clear they will have to wait for the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, who is currently on the entourage of the President to the United States to return and take action.
Yari said, “We discussed about the issue of the special intervention funds. In our last meeting with the President, we agreed in the National Economic Council that there will be a special intervention from the Federal for the state that cannot be able to foot their salary arrears to their workers.
“So, I follow up with the Chairman of the NEC (the Vice President) to know how far they have gone with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)….
“This issue of unpaid salaries is not only for the states, even the Federal Government is suffering the same thing.
“Therefore, we follow up to know how far they have gone with the CBN Governor and now we have gotten the brief but the CBN governor is out in Washington and immediately he comes back, we are going to take up the matter to see the end of issue of unpaid salaries to the workers.”
Asked to speak on the continuous activities of Boko Haram, Yari gave the military thumbs up on efforts made to cover a lot of grounds in the war against the terrorist sect.
He said their efforts has resulted in the sect being dislodged from every forest and local governments in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States unlike what was applicable before now, hence the gorilla war style the sect has adopted it.
Yari said, “The issue of insurgency is a kind of something that is a problem of all. Now, the Boko Haram members cannot be found in any forest, or in any local government among the occupied local governments in Borno, Yobe or Adamawa states. You cannot find them.
“So, what we are now suffering is a kind of guerrilla war, checking the bombs, dislodging the suicide bombings and what have you.
“But to see a group of 100 or 200 as Boko Haram members to confront with our military, they cannot be found.
So the government and the security agencies are doing their best to ensure that peace are restored, not that these things started under one year, two years.
“We are working and now it is the responsibility of our government to ensure security of lives and property of the people and the issue of Boko Haram is number one that Mr. President is discussing with the President of the United States and the supports he is going to give Nigeria to ensure that the issue of insurgency comes to an end.
“Government is going to put machinery in place, most especially the military and security in place to ensure
that the insurgency comes to and end.”
Yari was also asked to comment on the incidents of lead poison in his state and the steps being taken to address
it.
He said his government was working with some international bodies to educate the youths on how best to go about mining without causing harm to themselves.
“The issue of lead poisoning in the past is about education. Our youths are unemployed and they are looking
inward to the resources at their backyards. How they are going to
get employed? So, they are doing the mining without directive.
“So, when this happened since 2010, so many international groups, friends and donors are giving them supports
like DFID, World Bank, World Youths Organisation, among others.
“If these guys cannot stop the mining, we should find a way of providing a better mining technique, as safety
mining techniques so that this lead poisoning will not happen again.
“And we have been working tirelessly with these foreign supporters and lead poisoning has come to an end. We
have done our best, both the state and the Federal Government so that we teach the youths how to do the real mining even though the mining is illegal but still, these our teeming youths are unemployed.
“But you cannot tell them not to do it
without giving them something to do. So, we put them in a kind of
group and teach them the safe way of doing it and how to do it without being affected. So, the issue of lead poisoning is minimal or no more in the state,” Yari said.
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