Gov. Ahmed to SERAP: I’m Not Owing State Workers

The Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed has exempted his administration from the 12 state governors in the country that owed salaries of workers in the country.

He condemned the decision by SERAP, a rights advocacy group, to include him in a petition to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged non-payment of salaries to workers as ill-informed and misdirected as well as an attempt to whip up sentiments on an issue of national concern.

Speaking in Ilorin on Friday against the backdrop of the SERAP's petition that he was among those state governors that owed workers’ salaries, Governor Ahmed described it as baseless and lacking a foundation in fact as Kwara State was up to date in the payment of salaries to state civil servants and pensioners.

Alhaji Ahmed stressed that SERAP may have been referring to the local government councils in the state, which received separate allocations from the federal government and had varying degrees of staff and pension arrears.

Furthermore, the governor said despite experiencing a drop in monthly allocation from N3.2b to N800m, the state government had sustained payment of its civil servants and pensioners through prudent management of resources and revenue reforms which had increased Internally Generated Revenue by more than 100 per cent in less than a year,

According to a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Communications, Dr. Muyideen Akorede issued in Ilorin yesterday, Ahmed said he was currently working with local government chairmen in the state to redress salary arrears at that tier of government through measures such as the proposed takeover of Junior Secondary School funding by the state to reduce the financial pressure on local governments.