Governor Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa state Saturday, described the inability of the state government to pay civil servants and retirees their July entitlements before Sallah without difficulties as unfortunate.
Sule spoke when members of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the state council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) paid him a Sallah homage in his country home Gudi Akwanga local government area of the state.
He said the non-payment of the civil servants especially those at the local government councils and retirees in the state was as a result of an order from a Federal High Court in Abuja to garnish bank accounts of the state government.
He said the order came at a very embarrassing period when government had concluded arrangement to pay salaries of civil servants to enable them celebrate their Sallah but had made alternative arrangement for the payment of the salaries.
“The garnishe order came at a very embarrassing period because we had worked very hard and finished everything to pay salaries for the Sallah so that everybody will go and do his Sallah and by garnishing the account which means nobody will get anything is quite unfortunate.
“But I’m happy to tell you that I had called Lagos the headquarters of some of these banks so we have to make provisions to pay salaries and we paid salaries now but we are not able to pay pensioners because the provision that we get the approval from the top officials of the banks in Lagos can only allow us to pay salaries, therefore we cannot pay pensioners.
“But we have some provision for them which they would also be paid by next week.”
The governor further said he inherited four garnishee order on assuming office and one among them was the Breeze FM station destroyed by the previous administration, and he is working very hard to settle the matter.
He said his administration was committed to the welfare of civil servants, despite inheriting huge backlog of retirees’ gratuity which led to court action by pensioners in the state.
Sule called on the workers to remain calm as efforts were being made to resolve the matter as soon as possible to enable them access their full entitlements.