The office of the Accountant General of the Federation has assured that all federal civil servants will get their salaries before Christmas.
According to the AGF, there is an upgrade of the government integrated financial management information system to ensure payment of December salary before Christmas.
Speaking in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja, on Wednesday, December 16, Mohammed Dikwa, the director of funds in the office, said the system would be shut down over the weekend for the upgrade.
Dikwa said: “The essence of the shutdown is for maintenance. Some people complained that they couldn’t have access over the last few weeks because of the queue management challenge.
“We want to upgrade the infrastructure that we have over the weekend so that by Monday next week all payments will go on smoothly.
“If you look at the trend, people find it difficult to have access easily because the infrastructure was not strong enough to effectively handle the queue management.
“But with the new improvement, the system will be easily accessed, there will be seamless transactions, and people will get their money before Christmas particularly salaries and other financial commitments of government.
“I want to assure all Federal civil servants that, God willing, they will get their salaries before Christmas because we will try as much as possible to pay the salaries before that time.
“We hope to have the Federation Account Allocation Committee meeting much more earlier and that will give us the room to have more money into the consolidated revenue of the federal government that will be used for the purpose of paying salaries and other commitments of government as far as this financial year is concerned.’’
Following the inability of state governors to pay workers their salaries, some governors have been criticized after reports surfaced that there were planning to approve heavy funds aimed to be used for the yuletide season, one of which is Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo state.
He has been lashed at over reports that he approved N600 million for this year’s Christmas and New Year decorations.
