Due to the financial challenges that many States are currently facing which make them unable to pay salaries and fulfil other obligations, 36 states Governors have set up machinery to access
$3.25bn (N643.5bn) portfolio currently lying idle in the World bank.
The Nigerian Governors Forum Chairman, Governor Abdulaziz Yari of
Zamfara State, while addressing Journalists at the end of their meeting held inside Presidential Villa this Thursday, said the forum decided to invite
the World bank's country director, Rachid
Benmessaoud, to brief them “on the money
lying down in the World Bank which largely
belongs to state governments but had not been
accessed”.
Yari said it was the Kaduna State Governor,
Nasir El-Rufai, who advised his colleagues to
invite the World Bank official to come and
“educate the governors to know that these
monies are there especially in the kind of
situation we are in, the difficulties we are all
facing so that the states can move forward in
terms of infrastructural development and other
matters in our respective states”.
He also said “We discussed sincerely on the issue of
counterpart funding. It is more difficult for us to
fulfill our own part because we are struggling to
see how we can pay salaries; that is the most
difficult aspect of it. And they promised that
they will look into it and immediately that is
done, the states will move fast to ensure we
access it,”
On his contribution, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai said the World Bank portfolio for the states for the
2016 was $4.25billion, out of which, he said,
“$3.25billion dollars is lying there undisbursed”.
“You know $3.25billion dollars can do a lot to
improve the lives and livelihood of our citizens
in the state and the World Bank has expressed
its flexibility to look into the challenges we are
facing as well as the procedure or bottleneck to
ease the access of these monies,” El-Rufai said.
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