By Chiangi Avese, Makurdi
The Benue State Commissioner for Finance, Mr. Michael Oglegba, has said that prudent management and creative application of resources adopted by Governor Hyacinth Iormem Alia is aimed at bringing back stability into the state economy.
Mr. Oglegba who was fielding questions from journalists in his office Tuesday in Makurdi amongst other things, gave insight into the workings of the ministry under his watch, in trying to reposition the financial status of the state.
The Commissioner said, “The present government at inception, took drastic measures to reduce the cost of governance by blocking the hitherto, established holes, to stop leakages of meagre resources accruing to the state”.
The action, the Commissioner said, “had rescued over 1.2 million naira at the initial months of this administration. The continuation of those efforts has increased much more funds saved to the coffers of the state, and is ongoing as we speak”.
“The renewed hope means, the proper usage of any meagre resources for the people for which the resources are meant. The Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, of the state has played a crucial and strategic role in our strategy to run the state. What is gotten is been plugged back into the coffers of the state to bring about what we are doing; the construction of the road so far, and other capital projects will follow as the financial position of the state improves”, the Commissioner said.
Mr Oglegba frowned at a situation where the state under the past administration had to borrow to augment the federal allocations to enable payment of staff salaries, pensions and areas.
He disclosed that States in our income bracket paid salaries at the time, half of what their state got, pointing out that, “a state that pays out 95% of what accrues to it as recurrent expenditure and is left with only 5% for capital projects can not develop”.
“That was the point where Kaduna state was before El-Rufai came in. At the time he left, the state had changed from 30-70 to about 60-40 in favour of capital projects. That is where Gov. Alia wants Benue to be and where we are working hard to get”, the Commissioner enthused.
The Commissioner revealed that “when we came in, there were people on the state wage bill that had retired since 1976. We wanted to find out if this people were still alive. People that have retired since 2002 were yet to be captured for pension both at the local government and state level, and we wondered what was the problem”.
“In the past administration, it took at least 3 years before a retiree got captured for the first payment. Our checks through the employment of extensive technology to verify, found out that at least, 3,000 retirees who are dead were still been captured on the payroll. We dropped that figure from the State payroll”.
“Salaries, pensions, and payments to contractors had also accumulated to hundreds of billions of naira. You will agree with me that, that is no money the state can pay all at once. We are taking it into two categories; first, whoever retires now gets his gratuity at the end of the first month or, at most, the second. This, we are doing to phase off the problem of accumulation. And then, the payment of salaries on the 25th of every month.
“Gov. Hyacinth Alia is bent on restoring the dignity of the Benue worker, retired or working. The situation where a retired civil servant died from lack of money to buy drugs, a situation that could have been prevented, is unacceptable. Death benefits to those who die on the job, are now also paid to the family of the deceased in the first month”, the Commissioner said.
Mr Oglegba disclosed that” the state government is partnering with agencies to revamp vegetation and moribund companies to create jobs and take our youths off the streets into productive lives. To this end, the state government is in discussions with the federal government, drawing her attention to possible intervention. When that is procured, you can be sure, that will be judiciously utilized for the good of Benue people”.
“The Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Iormem Alia’s administration wishes to move Benue state from the obscurity foisted on the state in the past years to the notoriety of industrialized states on the Nigeria map. This we hope to achieve by industrializing the agricultural sector of the Benue economy and adding value to farmers’ efforts, creating jobs, payment of salaries as well as providing businesses with the enabling environment to thrive”, Mr Oglegba said.
