Governor says Imo is broke

Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha has reportedly said that the state is in serious financial difficulty.

Okorocha is said to have made the disclosure on Wednesday, January 27, 2016, while speaking to journalists at the Government House in Owerri, according to the Daily Sun.

“The monthly wage bill of the state is N4.2 billion which is far higher than what we receive from federal allocation including the internally generated revenue which means that the state government has always been operating on a deficit,” he said.

“As at December 31, 2015 the state received N1.9 billion from the Federal Government while the monthly wage bill of the state for the same period was N4.2 billion.

“We cannot continue to patch a cracked wall as if all is well, we need to break it down in order to rebuild it, and the current wage bill of the state is beyond our capacity," he added.

Imo State now receives the least allocation among the South-East states because of the monthly repayment of the bailout fund which the state took from the Federal Government, a situation which has further compounded the financial situation of the state.

Okorocha recently attracted outrage after sacking 3000 civil servants in the state.