Bail out Funds: Delta Never Withheld Nor Diverted Funds

The attention of Delta State Government has been drawn to a news report published on pages three and nine of the Nation Newspaper of Saturday “April 23,  2016  edition titled: “How States spent Their Bail-out Funds”.  We thereby wish to state, as follows;
1. The state government received the sum of N10,936,799.36 as bailout funds for salaries on 21/9/2015.

2. Following the monitoring of the utilization of funds by the Independent Corrupt Practices And Other Related Offences Commission(ICPC), the state received a letter dated 12/10/2015 with a questionnaire attached requesting for details of funds utilized.  In the response to the ICPC dated 15/10/2015, the state declared that the sum of N8,129,888,279.86 was expended with a balance of N2,806,911,019.50.

3. The balance of N2, 806,911,019.50 as at 31/12/2015 has been applied as follows:
(a) N2, 000, 000, 000 to the State Pension Bureau to reduce the state's  liability to pensioners.

(b) The sum of N806,911,019.50 was used for the payment of Primary  school teachers’ salaries.

4. It is pertinent to note that since January, 2016, the state has not received any request of update on the position of the disbursement of funds from the ICPC.

5. It is therefore necessary to state that the aforementioned newspaper report was based on a stale update.