Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has hailed President Muhammadu Buhari for using what he termed ‘financial creativity’ to save debtor states.
He said the development was made possible by compassion and leadership quality of the President.
Osinbajo, who made this remark in Ibadan, Saturday, said, considering the financial status of the affected states and the plight of the workers, it was necessary that any listening and sensitive government intervened in the way President Buhari did.
He said, “As you know, the Federal Government under President Buhari directed that three things should be done regarding the situation of the states in Nigeria. We know that the states were unable to pay salaries of their workers for many months. The first stage was the sum of money that was shared from the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas dividends and taxes, amounting to $2.1b.
“The second package is a loan which the states are allowed to access. The loans are concessionary in nature and any state that deserves it should have it. The third stage is the conversion of loans owed to commercial banks by the states to bonds. It is fairly complicated but simply put, the state and FG will work out how the loan will be repaid over an extended period of time. We are looking at 15 to 20-year period. Some have described this as bailout but what the President did is an extremely creative and compassionate way of giving relief to states as much as possible, given the financial circumstances they found themselves.”
Osinbajo further called on Nigerians to be vigilant in order not to fall into the dangerous plot of the Boko Haram. He also used the opportunity to clarify his recent statement on the plan by the insurgents to hit their targets using scavengers”.
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