Ogun denies tampering with LG allocation

The Ogun state government has debunked the allegation that it received N63,938,887, 374.47 billion in the last 21 months as federal allocations belonging to the councils without any meaningful thing to show for it.

The state Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Hon. Afolabi Afuape, discredited the figure during the Joint Account Allocation Committee (JAAC) meeting for August 2021, held in his Oke-Mosan office, Abeokuta.

Giving the actual figure due to the councils as N63, 713,194,358.26, Hon. Afuape disclosed that additional sum of N9, 904, 945,970.80 was released by the state government to argument the councils’ capital expenditure and their effective running.

According to him, a total of N73, 618,140,323.02 has been paid to all the 20 local government councils as statutory payment within 21 months.

The commissioner explained further that the state government has been augmenting the local government accounts to enable them pay the first line charges, which included primary school teachers’ salaries, local government staff salaries and allowances, primary school teachers, and local governments’ staff pension, not leaving out administrative sundry expenses for chairmen, traditional councils, statutory payment of local government service commission and unions’ check-off dues from May 2021 –July 2021.

He said statutory allocation received from the Federation Account for August stood at N3,433,170,398.83 and the first line charges deduction has a total of N4,055,100,639.78, showing a deficit of N621,930,240.90, while the deficit breakdown stood at N626,218,967.27 and the surplus of allocation received over net salary stood at N4,288,726.32.