Akeredolu Has Reduced Ondo Debt From N220bn To N92bn — Commissioner

The administration of Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu in Ondo State has reduced the state’s debt profile from N220bn inherited from the past administration to N92bn.

Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, Pastor Emammuel Igbasan, disclosed this during an interactive session with members of the Correspondents Chapel of Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Akure, the state capital on Thursday.

He said the Governor Akeredolu administration’s decision to engage the input of the citizens on its budgeting processes since 2017 has helped the state government to receive several global partnerships.

According to him, “We have internal and external debts in the state, but when you bring the totality together, the conceptual debt amounts to N220bn when we took over. Right now, it has reduced to between N90bn to N92bn, including multilateral debt.”

Igbasan further disclosed that, “All the salaries we paid were part of the debt. The cumulative debt of pensioners was N35bn when we took over. Even if we deploy the resources of the state, we cannot offset this, then we decided to give N200 million to them yearly to sort the pensioner’s debt.”

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While speaking on the plans of the government to tackle the Ayetoro sea incursion, Igbasan said the sea incursion menace faced by Ayetoro residents has been a source of worry to Governor Akeredolu.

According to him, “Ayetoro is a problematic and pathetic one for us as a state. If you look at the historical heritage of that place and its enterprises, it is not a place that should go into extinction.

“There are so many theories, because for me, before I profer solutions, I want to dig deep into the root of the problem so that I won’t be dealing with the symptoms. I told Mr. Governor that before we can give solutions to the problem in Ayetoro, we need to know the cause.

“There’s no vacuum in nature. If you look at the proximity of Ondo State to Lagos and the volume of sand that was pulled from the sea to create a city where they drove the sea several miles away, there’s a possibility the sand was gotten from Ondo State.

“Some states erected sea breakers at the bottom of the sea which would change the natural cause of the flow of the seawater, that might have been the repercussions that we are facing here. Another perspective is the activities of the oil companies. While I was doing my research, I stumbled on information as far back as 1958, and it has been predicted that something like this would happen.

“The rise in climate change and the erosion level can be the cause too in Ayetoro. They have awarded numerous projects to salvage the issues in Ayetoro, One of them brought in sand to fill the place, but within a few days, they ran out of sand.

“Many of the perspectives put there is not true, we need to conduct a critical survey on the solution to that place. Mr. Governor, before he went on vacation, put up a committee on Ayetoro’s problem.

“They are to look for funds to tackle the situation. The governor was emotional, and he said this would be one of the bad things he be will leaving behind, that he left Ayetoro worse than he met it.”