Mohammed Umar Bago.
Niger state governor.
The Governor Mohammed Umar Bago- led administration in Niger state said it had saved N10 billion and and paid counterpart funding to all Development Partners since its inception 29th May, 2023.
Other achievements of the administration within the period under review is the gradual end to dependent on over drafts to pay workers’ salaries, adding that the figure has dropped from N3.9 billion to about N2 billion.
Addressing journalists on the 100 days in office of Governor Umar Bago, the Head of Service, Alhaji Abubakar Salihu said the administration had also made tremendous in-roads to end difficulties in sourcing for funds to pay workers’ salaries.
Salihu, flanked by the Commissioner for Communication and Digital Economy, Mallam Suleiman Isah and their Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs counterpart, Mu’azu Hamidu Jantabo said the administration had also evolved strategies that enabled it to block loopholes, thereby, saving about N10 billion.
“With due diligent and strict financial discipline across all sectors, we have been able to block all loopholes causing leakages in government finances and this led to the saving of not less than N10 billion that would have hitherto not being able to be accounted for,” he said.
Contributing, the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Mu’azu Hamidu Jantabo, recalled that paying staff salaries in Local Government Councils had been difficult.
This he added include but not limited to requiring overdraft of at least N3.9 billion to pay local government workers but all these things are about becoming a thing of the past.
“Due to the political will of the Governor Bago who is also coming from financial discipline background and his focus on having a sustainable fiscal policy, the N3.9 billion has been reduced to N2 billion and hopefully,would be unnecessary by December, this year”.
He added that with the political will the government had also been able to off-set backlog of local government salaries for 2020.
Meanwhile, the Commissioner for Communication and Digital Economy, Suleiman Isah, said the state government was partnering with Google Developers Group to host about 1,000 indigenous developers in November.
“The Council has also agreed to domesticate ICT projects and has proposed electronic document management for SEC meetings which will be achieved before December, 2023 thereby making such meetings paperless,” he said.
Edited by Dada Ahmed.
