Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom says his administration is finding it difficult to pay salaries of workers in the state.
Civil servants in the state are currently being owed three months’ workers salaries.
Ortom, however, gave three reasons for this development in an interview with journalists in Makurdi, the state capital.
The governor cited factors such as the rising cost of overheads, the inability of the NNPC to remit money to the federal accural and the state’s low internally generated revenue (IGR) as a result of insecurity as reasons for his administration’s inability to pay workers’ salaries.
He said it had been difficult to coordinate the IGR due to the worsening insecurity, which had turned about two million people in the state to refugees in the Internally Displaced Persons camps.
Ortom said, “Even the Federal Government has been borrowing to pay salaries but states do not have powers to do so except with permission from the Federal Ministry of Finance’s Debt Management Office (DMO).
“It’s a big challenge because we are facing the economic realities.”