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Emmanuel Adeyemi Lokoja
Former Governor of Kogi State, Capt. Idris Wada, has said Governor Yahaya Bello’s blaming of past administrations for his inability to develop the state was a sign of incompetence.
Wada made the comment in reaction to Bello’s independence day broadcast where he attributed his inability to develop the state to a N50 billion salary obligation left for him by past administrations.
The ex-governor, in an interview with Daily Sun, said it was sad for the governor to engage in a blame game and outright lies that he inherited N50 billion salary obligations when in actual fact the bailout fund his administration applied for, which was N50.8 billion was paid to him.
Wada explained that at a time after he assumed office, allocation to LGAs dropped. He said when the opportunity for bailout presented itself, the total amount due and owed to the LGAs was N45 billion while it was estimated that by the end of his administration workers would be indebted to about N5.2 billion, making it a total of N50.3 billion.
He noted that based on advice from the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) the state was at some time in his administration using two months allocation to pay for a month. He said his administration indebtedness to workers was two months, saying it was wrong that after five years the present administration would be engaged in blame games for it’s failure even after benefiting from a bailout.
“The fund was to clear salary arrears of local government workers, but was not released during my tenure, but released to Bello which he refused to use for the purposes for which it was meant for. There are more pressing and important issues at hand begging for urgent attention than to engage in blame game for his obvious incompetence,”he said.
