State Governors Shift Attention To World Bank’s $3.25bn

State governors have decided to turn to the World Bank as one of the ways of surviving the current poor state of the economy which has made it difficult for many of them to pay salaries.

They are putting machinery in place to access $3.25bn portfolio currently lying idle in the bank.

The Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum, Alhaji Abdulaziz Yari; and the Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, briefed State House correspondents of the decision at the end of a meeting of the NGF held inside the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The meeting which started at about 8.45pm on Wednesday ended in the early hours of Thursday.

Yari who is the Zamfara State Governor said the governors decided to invite the Country Director of World Bank, Rachid Benmessaoud, who briefed the forum on the money lying down in the  bank which largely belongs to state governments but has not been accessed.

He said because of the cumbersome procedure in accessing the funds, most of the governors did not  know they had such funds in the bank.

He said it was El-Rufai’s  initiative that a delegation of the bank  should come and make the presentation so that the governors could be educated.

Yari said states have been defaulting in paying their counterpart funding because of the economic downturn.

He however said the bank officials have agreed to revisit the issue.

The governor said, “They came to educate the governors so that they will know that these monies are there especially in the kind difficult situation we are, so that the states can move forward in terms of infrastructure development and other matters in our respective states.

“We had a presentation from the World Bank officials and we agreed on terms. The governors contributed that so many things should be involved,most especially the issue of counterpart funding which the bank accepted they are going to look into.

“Also, they agreed that they will give us the details of state-by-state how much is lying down for each state and how we are going to access it. As of now, they are ready to facilitate a kind of workshop to the state governors and the commissioners of finance and other staff, so that we can know how best to move and access these funds for the betterment of our respective states.

“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.”

El Rufai on his part admitted that all state governments are broke.

He said that was the reason why they must work hard to access the money.

He expressed the belief that the idle money was capable for turning around the fortunes or the states if accessed.

“The World Bank portfolio for the states for this year is $4.25bn and out of that, $3.25bn  is lying there undisbursed which means the states are not meeting their conditions or not moving fast enough to draw this $3.25bn.

“You know $3.25bn 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 because the World Bank wants us to withdraw these money as quickly as possible so that our citizens will get the benefits from health to education and the rural access, agriculture and the revival of livestock and water supply.

“These are the areas that most of these funds are dedicated and we all need the money because we are all broke. So, we are going to work very hard to try to get these monies in trust,” he said.