- Safiu Kehinde
The Federal Government has claimed that 27 states across the country were unable to pay workers’ salaries before the introduction of President Bola Tinubu’s economic reforms.
Taiwo Oyedele, the Minister of Finance, made the claim while speaking at the presentation of Nigeria’s reform scorecard during stakeholders’ engagement on Wednesday.
The minister, in his presentation, held that the states as of May 2023 could not reliably pay salaries until the implementation of Tinubu’s reform policies.
He maintained that the number has reduced to zero as against the administration’s pre-reform trajectory.
‘It is harder to see what did not happen, but as scorecard puts numbers to it, in May 2023, 27 states could not reliably pay salaries.
‘Today, the number is zero. On the pre-reform trajectory, our own estimate is that 10 states will be in that position by now, struggling to pay salaries.
‘That is not a handful, that is a majority of the federation.’ Oyedele said.
The minister further highlighted the accomplishments of the Tinubu-led administration which include drop in Naira-Dollar exchange rate and fuel subsidy removal.
‘The official exchange premium under parallel market once above 60 percent is now under 5 percent.
‘We projected that it would be above 150 percent today with Naira simply unavailable at any official rate for most Nigerians and businesses.
‘We were running out of Dollars. Our net external reserve was under N3 billion and we owning over N7 billion. That is bankruptcy.
‘And you know we can’t print Dollars because we are not the United States of America.’ He said.
On impact of the external reserve of fuel subsidy which led to its removal, Oyedele defended the decision as he claimed there would have been scarcity of fuel if Nigeria had continued with subsidy.
‘What that means is even to buy fuel, you owe N3,000 and you will not find a litre. There will be scarcity everywhere.
‘Remember we were importing refined products. Dangote Refinery would not have been able to start because you can’t sell at N200/litre and queue up for government to pay the balance of over a thousand Naira per litre- the same government that has been spending nearly 100 percent of its revenue to service debts and printing a lot of money’ He added.