Immediate past Abia State governor, Theodore Orji has said his successor, Okezie Ikpeazu has no reason to owe salaries and pension, wondering how Ikpeazu appropriated billions of federal government bailout funds to the state.
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Orji stated this yesterday in a statement by his liason officer, Ifeanyi Umere while reacting to the ongoing weeklong strike by the state chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress over unpaid salaries and pension.
“It’s unfortunate that I am forced to comment and refute the half-truths being dished out by those who through their own bad choices have found themselves in a quagmire,” he said.
“For the avoidance of any doubt, neither myself nor my administration is responsible for the staggering salary arrears owed both civil servants, parastatals and pensioners in the state.”
He said when his administration exited on May, 29, 2015, core civil servants were not owed even one month salary arrear, while staff of the parastatals were owed between two and four months.
“The records are there,” said the Peoples Democratic Party senator for Abia Central in the statement entitled, “Ikpeazu should carry his cross,”
According to the former governor and Ikpeazu’s godfather, the arrears his administration recorded were necessitated by the dwindling federal allocation occasioned by the worsening global economy.
He noted that the price of crude oil had crashed and the states were getting a paltry two to three billion naira monthly which was not even enough to run the state including capital and recurrent expenditures.
Arguing that the Ikpeazu administration, as government is a continuum, inherited both his own’s assets and liabilities, he added “So, if we were owing two to three months, we expected our successors to clear them.”
The two-term legislator explained that the expectation was based on the fact that the Ikpeazu administration received bail out funds from the federal government more than three times running into billions of naira.
“Again the economy had picked up considerably enabling the outgoing government to chalk up considerable income as can be confirmed from the ministry of finance. So why was it difficult for it to offset the debts?
“Again if for any reason it couldn’t or was unwilling to offset,why did it allow it to skyrocket to between 35 and 40 months? Why is it also owing core civil servants? So basically, I am not the problem.”
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