The treasury of the Ogun state government has gone leaner these days, as the gloomy Nigerian economy takes its toll.
Governor Ibikunle Amosun at an interactive session with various groups and citizens of the state on Sunday dropped the shocking news that the state revenue has fallen by 74 per cent. At its zenith, Ogun state was making N6billion monthly from internally generated revenue up till 2014.
But on Sunday, Governor Amosun did not give the comparative revenue figures as of now, while enumerating the various bills his government pays to run its schools.
“Things are not like when we came in. What we are collecting now is 74 per cent less than what we were collecting in 2011 when we came into office.
” Imagine paying almost N800M to N900M monthly to our schools and it is interesting to know that we have the largest number of institutions in the country and most of them are state owned.
“We pay Olabisi Onabanjo University,OOU N85.5M every month and it was paid for four years. We have also paid backlog of 18-19 months. If you multiply this by 12 and times by 48, it means that in four years,we have paid over N40billion to them. You will agree with me that it is not easy, but we will not relent.
“TASUED with total number of students of almost 20,000 collects between N50M to N60M monthly,MAPOLY, Abeokuta of about 25,000 students receives N40M,OOUTH,Sagamu,N190M, DS Adegbenro,Itori,about N8M.
“The primary school teachers are not there,they take away nothing less than N2.1billion monthly and if we added the secondary staff to it,it gives you something around N3.2billion.