30,000 Ghost Workers Discovery: FG Saves N10b Monthly •Reintroduces Jonathan’s YouWin Programme
Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun on Friday explained that President Muhammadu Buhari needs special permission from the National Assembly to be able to truncate some inhibiting legal encumbrances in order to urgently reflate the economy.
Speaking during a media briefing, Adeosun also said that the administration has decided to reintroduce some of the initiatives of the last administration found to be well.
Adeosun also said that as a result of the cleaning up of government’s pay roll, personnel cost has reduced by as much as N10 billion monthly through discovery of over 30,000 ghost workers and the saved amount is being used to fund recruitment of additional staff in Nigeria Police, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Nigeria Railway and others.
Also, the Minister explained that the decision to release N350 billion second quarter capital vote would be made on Friday afternoon so that the fund would start to hit the spending ministries by early next week.
Adeosun equally disclosed that part of the N350 billion is an embedded N60 billion meant to finance the much expected Social Intervention.
Speaking on incessant complaints that N400 billion was said to have been released to the Ministries of Power, Defence, Interior, Transport and Agriculture since June whereas Nigerians were not feeling the effect, she blamed the procurement process, which is long and tedious.
She however, declared that procurement laws must be obeyed to the letter unless the National Assembly gives a go-ahead to the executive to bypass some of the processes.
“We don’t have power to truncate the law. The National Assembly needs to allow us to truncate the long procurement process”, she said so that work can begin early on many of the capital projects that would reflate the economy, get people back to work and reduce inflation.
The Finance Minister said the flagship job creation programme of the Jonathan administration, YouWin was being urgently restructured and would soon be reintroduced including Project Nollywood and all the things that were working well.
Government has also secured N1 billion from some oil marketers to be deposited with the Infrastructure Bank for the procurement of more commercial buses that would be given out to drivers who would use them as transport buses.
In addition, the much-hyped Social Intervention programme would kick off this month with the recruitment of additional 500,000 teachers, feeding of school children and distribution of N5000 to some indigent Nigerians.
Speaking on Eurobond issue, Adeosun said a request for proposal has been issued to interested international banks, which would expire on September 19 and that government expects to rake $1 billion from the bond issue to be wholly deployed to capital projects.
Speaking on confiscated non-financial assets from indicted public officials, the Minister who refused to disclose names of individual said the assets include farm lands, jewelries, vehicles and houses.
She noted a committee has been set up on how to dispose them and that it would decide on how best to dispose with them.
In an intervention during the briefing, Accountant General of the Federation, Mr. Ahmed Idris disclosed that qualified states have been provided a special loan of N150 billion in the last three months by Federal Government as budget support.
