Minister of finance, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala said yesterday
during the opening of the two-day meeting of Commissioners of Finance and
Accountants-General of States, that the federal government can't meet the
N92billion being demanded by ASUU.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
said
“At present, ASUU wants the Federal Government to pay N92
billion in extra allowances, when the resources are not there, and when we are
working to integrate past increases in pensions. We need to make choices in
this country as we are getting to the stage where recurrent expenditures take
the bulk of our resources and people get paid but can do no work. Since I
assumed office, the share of recurrent expenditure in our total budgets had
increased astronomically. In fact, recurrent expenditure accounted for about
77.2 per cent of the federal budget and we are now working to re-balance this
ratio.
The country is still suffering from the effect of the 2010
increase in salary. Do we want to get to a stage in this country that all the
money we earn is used to pay salaries and allowances? If the demands of the
university lecturers are met and we continue to pay them salaries and
allowances, we will not be able to provide infrastructure in the universities.”
So what does this mean? Students will continue to stay at
home?
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