By Abel Leonard /lafia
Nasarawa State Government for some weeks now has been in a fix on the running of the state affairs and to ensure that funds generated in the state is used to pay salaries and other activities of governance.
This is because, the state government account was frozen last month by Abuja High Court, resulting to the State Governor, Abdullahi Sule seeking other mean to ensure there is no gap in running the affairs of the State.
State Commissioner for Finance, Budget and Planning, Haruna Adamu Ogbole, disclosed this while briefing newsmen on the financial status of the state in Lafia.
It will be recall that daybreak news reports that a group of pensioners numbering over 600, out of the 9000 pensioners in the state had approached an Abuja High Court demanding that the state government account be frozen until their entitlements are paid.
The commissioner explained that ever since the court order took effect last month, the governor has been running the state with IGR pending the resolution of the matter in court.
“It is not that government is totally grounded, we have IGR in the state that we are leveraging on to run the government.
“But the basic thing the court garnish, that will affect us is our salary accounts.
“Nasarawa is a civil service state and once salaries are not paid, it affects the whole state and that is what we are facing,” Ogbole said.
The commissioner furthered, stressed that in February 2020, the state government realised the sum of N1.2 billion as IGR and was expecting to raise it to over N2 billion before the COVID-19 pandemic affected the state’s IGR.
“The IGR is being driven by economic activities, so the more the economic activities of every month, the higher the IGR we get.
“In February, we raised up to N1.2 billion, but subsequently when the pandemic set in, it dropped to N500 million, and now it is not going to be more than N400 million because economic activities are grounded by the pandemic.
“We were targeting N2 billion monthly and it was achievable due to certain measures the governor put in place such as central billing system, blocking leakages and civil servants biometrics all aimed at cutting down the cost of governance,” he said
