This State Government is Proposing Issuing Bonds to Clear All Outstanding Arrears of Pension and Gratuities

Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State has proposed a bond to enable his administration offset the outstanding arrears of gratuities of pensioners.

Fayemi, who stressed the need to address the pension challenges confronting the state, said the government would soon organize bond to offset the outstanding gratuities of pensioners and later find a way of paying back.

A statement from the Chief Press Secretary to the State Governor, Yinka Oyebode on Saturday, said the governor made the disclosure in Ado Ekiti on Thursday at a meeting with the United Nations Systems Resident Coordinator.

The Governor said, 

“We are interested a lot in the bond and we have a practical challenge here for example in our state. We are looking at a way of developing an innovative bond to address it. We have a lot of people who have retired from service and their gratuities have piled up over past couple of years running into billions of naira that we are not immediately able to pay and I don’t think it is fair for all these people who have devoted years of their lives to serving the state.

“That is why we started the social security scheme for the elderly as a safety net to address this sort of issue. But for us, we think it should be possible for us to develop a bond that can enable us to pay off all these and then find a way to offset that bond over a long term,” the governor said.