BENUE WAGE BILL: I Have Documents to Show that Benue State Wage Bill is not N7.8 Billion - Suswam

Over the weekend,some press men confronted fmr gov of Benue State, Dr Gabriel Suswam  over allegations by the current administration that he left behind ghost workers that is why the current wage Bill is high and that is also why the current administration is unable to pay workers salaries.Read excerpts from his interview...

 Sir, your administration is being accused of being the owners of ghost workers in the state?

That is totally untrue because I didn’t hand over any ghost workers to anyone. You see, it is rather very funny that they are claiming to be paying N7.8 b monthly. We are going to address that next week because as at the time we left, the last salary we paid was about N2.7 b.

Are there documents to back your claims sir?

Yes, there are documents, and I also have documents of what this present administration paid in June, July, August and September which wasn’t different from what we paid. So I am surprised that they started talking about N7.8b which is very ridiculous.

How do you react to that sir?

It is absolutely ridiculous that a governor would claim that he is paying that much. There is something that is fundamentally wrong with that, and we are going to publish what I paid from the day I entered into office up till the last day. We shall also publish what this government paid from June till September which isn’t totally different from what I paid in my last days in office.

But they claim you own the ghost workers that jerked up the wage bill?

That isn’t true because the last salary I paid was about N2.7b. If there was anything that was added to the salary, that should be in December 2015, and I didn’t do it because I had already left office then. I handed over about 19,000 workers to Ortom and the wage bill as at then was N2.7 b.

Sir, but they claim the wage bill is now N7.8b?

That is ridiculous. Are they saying that the N7.8b is the combination of civil service and local government? Let them be clear about that and stop fooling the people. You cannot put overhead as salary because they are two different things. Let them tell us what they’re paying for overhead. Let them tell us what they are paying for salaries. They must tell us what they pay the local governments because that is a different tier of government, and you cannot join salaries of state workers and local government together and create an impression that you are paying civil service N7.8b monthly. Let them come out and say how much because I have all the documents of everything they have been paying.

You have got proofs?

Yes, I have proofs of what we were paying and what is being paid by them till now. They must tell us what they are paying as local government staff salaries, they must tell us what they are paying teachers and the core civil servants in the state. We have all the materials and we shall release some of them by next week. When i was governor, I didn’t hide what I paid as salaries so I have what I paid from day one and also the sequences at which I increased salaries.