Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose, yesterday confirmed that he had no intention to pay outstanding pensions and gratuities from the states bail-out fund of N9.6 billion.
According to him his government only got N9.6 billion out of the over N29 billion it applied for.
Retirees in the state had last week alleged that the governor had excluded the payment of their pension arrears and gratuities from the Federal Government’s bail-out.
Fayose made the clarification yesterday at Ikogosi-Ekiti during the opening ceremony of a two-day retreat for commissioners, permanent secretaries and heads of agencies.
He also stated that out of the N5.6 billion applied for by the 16 local governments in the state, the FG only approved N991 million, adding that pension arrears and gratuities were also not approved.
In a statement in Ado-Ekiti by his Chief Press Secretary, Idowu Adelusi, the governor said the clarification became necessary following insinuations that the state government did not want to pay pensions arrears and gratuities of retirees.
Governor Fayose said, “You people know that I don’t hide anything from you when allocations come. We applied for N29 billion from the bail-out fund. It is to cover the August and September 2014 salary arrears left by the Fayemi government, leave bonus, pensions, gratuities and others. But for reasons we don’t know yet, the FG only approved N9.6 billion for salaries leaving other issues.
“The 16 local governments applied for N5.6 billion and we did all the necessary papers and presented them to the appropriate authorities, but only N991 million was approved. We were later told by the Central Bank of Nigeria that about 14 states had similar problems with the small amount approved for local governments.
