Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has called on the Federal Government to use dialogue instead of force to resolve the Niger Delta crisis.
He said the incessant bombing of oil facilities would hamper the flow of revenue for the nation.
The Niger Delta Avengers, a new group of armed militants, have in recent weeks bombed oil pipelines in the region.
Although the government is mustering military campaigns against the militants, Mr. Fayose said a soft approach could handle the problem.
The governor, who made this disclosure during a media interview on Saturday, also barred the state’s striking workers from benefiting from the next round of salary payments.
The workers had embarked on strike since Wednesday, demanding the payment of their December 2015 deductions amounting to N512million.
“The Federal Government should use dialogue to resolve the Niger Delta issue and stem the tide of incessant bombing of oil facilities that is impending the flow of revenue to the nation’s coffers,” he said.
He also said only workers who are not on strike would be paid their salary from the little monthly allocation that came from Abuja.
“Workers at the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital under the auspices of JOHESU have written that they are not on strike and people like that will be paid from what came from Abuja,” he said.
“Since I have no power to stop workers from going on strike, I wish them well, but we need to understand what the situation is like. They cannot say that I have not consistently been alerting Nigerians since late last year that a time like this is coming. In fact, the next allocation may be smaller than the one we are complaining about now.”
Mr. Fayose said that embarking on strike was not the solution to the poor resources available to the government, which led to irregular payment of salary in the last few months.
The governor said the state was handicapped by the continuous reduction in statutory allocations coming to the state and the general economic recession in the country.
“For the April allocation shared in May, we got N752 million, while our wage bill is N2.6 billion monthly,” he explained.
“The previous month we got a little over N1 billion and that has been the trend since last year.
“We have had to combine two monthly allocations to be able to pay a month salary, but since the beginning of this year, it is that three allocations are not even enough to pay a month salary.
“When you compare what we got from January to May, 2015 and what we got in the same period this year, we have a shortfall of over N6 billion.
“Some are talking about our internally-generated revenue, there is nothing to hide. All the records are there for all to see and I have always told labour leaders to go and verify. The highest we have recorded is N302 million a month. There was a month we had N181 million.”
Mr. Fayose pointed out that since he assumed office he had consulted with a committee of stakeholders made up of Labour leaders every month the allocation papers arrive from Abuja, noting that the committee had been responsible for sharing the allocation.
“If I am not hiding anything from labour leaders and workers, I expect them to understand. I feel their pain, but there is a limit to what I can do in this type of situation.,” he noted.
Governor Fayose said the economic situation of the state was worsened by the indiscriminate borrowing the Kayode Fayemi administration embarked upon.
“The N25 billion they raised from the capital market, the nearly N30 billion commercial loans, the UBEC, water scheme, fertilizer and other loans they incurred, led to the deduction of about N1 billion from our allocations monthly,” he highlighted.
“Where were the labour and their leaders when they were borrowing all these monies? I reiterate again that no administration should be allowed to borrow beyond its tenure.”
On the staff audit conducted by the government last year, he said 315 ghost workers were detected through the exercise and that the report would soon be made public.
source: nigerianeye
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