Twenty one Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors are believed to be owing school teachers and other workers in their respective state as at the time, last week they collectively announced the donation of N1.5 billion of naira to the presidential campaign funds in the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Some of the governors are said to be owing the workers for an upward of two and three months’ salaries. In Ebonyi state, authorities are said to be owing teachers under the Universal Basic Education scheme for nearly 12 months of salaries.
In Abia State, secondary school teachers were last paid in August, while primary school teachers have been owed since October.
In Akwa Ibom State, the nation’s leading oil producer which draws more than triple of what other states receive from the federation account monthly, local government workers were on strike. Before the strike, they were forced to receive half salaries for several months, while authorities claimed they had no money.
In Cross River, the situation had worsened after months of indebtedness that state-run television, the Cross River Broadcasting Corporation (CRBC), shut off production last week and has since remained off air till date. Other staff fortunate to have received reasonably up-to-date pay, have yet to be paid for November.
But on Saturday night, Cross State governor, Liyel Imoke, stood next to his Bauchi State colleague, Isa Yuguda, as Yuguda announced to the president and the nation how the 21 governors who had been struggling to pay salaries long before the present oil crisis, rallied N50 million each in donation to the PDP.
“We may do more in future, but that is what we were able to raise for now,” Yuguda assured.
In all, the PDP and the president raked in over N21 billion, with donations coming from government contractors, nameless associates, and Tunde Ayeni, the head of Skye Bank, who has bought a string of government assets, including the mega telecoms carrier, NITEL/MTEL, in a process that has already become controversial.
On Monday, Arabian Amlak Investment Limited, one of the 22 companies that bid for NITEL, filed a legal challenge, saying the Nigerian government, through the Bureau of Public Enterprises, deliberately skewed the privatisation process to favour Mr. Ayeni’s company.
As chairman of the PDP fund raiser, Mr. Ayeni donated N2 billion. He announced that he was donating N1 billion on behalf of himself and an unnamed partner, and another two billion on behalf of his friends. After a while, Mr. Ayeni returned to the podium to announce another donation of half a billion naira on behalf of himself and other players in the country’s power sector.
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