4th August, 2023
A few days back at the Passing Out ceremony of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members at their Permanent Orientation Camp in Wannune, Benue State Governor, Hyacinth Alia, pledged to pay a monthly allowance of N15,000 to each Corps member posted to the state, with medical graduates among them to get N100,000 each.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state views this pledge as likely another of the publicity stunts Governor Alia loves to indulge in, from the days of the campaigns and now that he is in office, none of which has resulted in anything serious.
The non feasibility of this promise stems from its financial implications, as analytically, 1,500 Corps members were posted to the state for the Batch B Stream 1 which passed out on that day, with the Batch B Stream 2 still to come, likely in the same number taking the total for the batch to 3,000, and with three batches per Call Year, A,B, & C, we will likely have 9,000 Youth Corps members on the state's monthly payroll.
A simple arithmetic calculation puts N15,000 multiplied by 9,000 at N135,000,000 (one hundred and thirty five million naira) monthly, which when multiplied by the 12 calendar months that make up a Call Year brings the total expenditure for this promise of the governor to 1,620,000,000 (one billion, six hundred and twenty million naira), and this is exclusive of the N100,000 he pledged to medical graduates.
PDP challenges Governor Alia to make public the source of funding for this pledge, considering that such expenditure was not captured in the budget for the current fiscal year, neither does he have an Executive Council in place which may draw up a supplementary budget for presentation to the state Assembly timeously enough to begin effecting such payments.
Where does the governor plan to draw over N135,000,000 monthly to effect payment to those Youth Corpers as he has promised, given that this amount is way above the spending limit permitted him by law outside of an Exco decision?
It will be most unfortunate should the Benue State Governor, by this promise, be merely indulging his addiction for cheap popularity through bogus promises which he never keeps, thereby adding the corps members to IDPs and workers in the state as victims on the 'Failed Promises Row'.
Bemgba Iortyom
State Publicity Secretary,
PDP, Benue State.
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