Damaturu — The whole brouhaha is about a whopping N1.7 billion loan which the Yobe State chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), secured for its members from the Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), but the state Governor Senator Mamman Ali, came out publicly and dissociated himself from it, claiming that the whole package was shrouded in secrecy and a breach of bureaucracy on the part of labour.

The question on the lips of many people now is: who is at the receiving end because hundreds of civil servants including primary and secondary school teachers, health workers and those on the payroll of the 17 local government areas of the state, who have benefitted from the loan have been left "on their own" as the governor who expressed dissatisfaction with the deal, said his government will not guarantee anybody.

The governor said the attitude of the officials was to undermine some of his promises, one of which was his resolve not to collect any loan from any bank or financial institution in the country on the grounds that he has made adequate savings to cater for the infrastructure needs of the state and the welfare of the civil servants.

He said the state was comfortable with what it generates from various sources, adding that he has been paying salaries and contractual obligation, despite the financial crisis which has also affected the release of money from the federation account for this month. He added that the take home pay of the workers was also increased this year and wondered why they went for the loan

The governor, who expressed sadness and disappointment at a forum with the top echelon of the civil servants in the state at the IBB state secretariat, declared that those who collected the loan were strictly "on their own because Yobe state government has no hand in the fraudulent loan".

On that day, the governor was visibly angry and stated that no bank will grant a loan facility of such magnitude without first consulting the chief executive officer of the state.

"I want to say that no bank in Nigeria will grant such a loan to civil servants of a state without the knowledge of the chief executive except there is something fishy. I cannot mince words to say that GTBank are fraudulent and half thieves", Gov. Ali said.

On the other hand, the NLC chairman, Comrade Mohammed Bukar, said the Yobe state government was involved at every stage of the loan process.

Speaking to our correspondent on the controversial loan, Comrade Bukar said, "it is very unfortunate that this loan issue has generated a lot of tension at this material time". He said the issue of the loan came into being as a result of some requests the NLC received from its affiliated unions.

"When individual civil servants who are members of various unions under the umbrella of the NLC approached the GTBank for a loan assuring that they would open an account with the bank, the bank advised the workers to go back and come as a union to pursue the issue through the state government", he said

He said the NLC has about 36 affiliated unions in the country even though only 22 have been registered in Yobe State with 16 directly under the state's civil service.

Some of the unions according to him, include the Amalgamated Union of Civil Servants, the Nigerian Union of Teachers, NULGE among others and they cut across ministries, departments and parastatals.

"When the umbrella unions tabled the issue before the NLC, around January this year, we agreed that it is better we approach our employers and it took us about five months to iron it out.

The GTB presented their package which we discussed and then showed it to all the workers who indicate interest in the loan including the terms of repayment, duration and mode of payment.

He said what the NLC did was to ensure control and to achieve that, they wrote a letter to the governor through the office of the Head of Service, Mallam Ibrahim Abdurrahman, stating that individual workers through their unions are seeking a loan from the GTB.

"We told those who wanted to collect the loan to fill forms which carrie a lot of details even though we did not assign any legal practitioner to handle the issue for us, but we were able to capture all relevant data that confirmed the authenticity of the workers.

All the forms were signed by the permanent secretaries of the ministries where the beneficiaries are working and there was a column that the various unions had to endorse", he said.

He said the union also ensured that no civil servant collected more than necessary as most of them collected between N50, 000 and N200, 000 with only those in the senior cadre and the medical line collecting between N500. 000 and N750, 000 adding that no one went for more than one million naira.

He said even though the state government had increased the salaries of the workers, the aim of the loan was to encourage NLC members to be self reliant.

"We had several meetings with the civil servants where we advised them to use the money that they would collect to go into agriculture.

"At the NLC level, we also constituted a committee and the head of service invited us for a meeting and he asked us about the interest. Usually, most of the banks charges 22 percent while others charge 19 percent but the committee said GTB had agreed to charge 18 percent payable within 24 month which in our view is fair", the comrade.

The head of service, Mallam Ibrahim Abdurrahman said the NLC was not fair to him by saying he was involved in every stage of the loan deal. "The governor has said it all and it will not be wise for me to talk...the NLC can get a loan, they have been doing that for a very long time only that their approach to the issue was different this time around.

Many people did not realize the magnitude of the declaration of the governor until last week when he directed his commissioner of finance Alhaji Mohammed Hassan not to allow any deduction for the GTB at source before crediting the October salary of the civil servants into their accounts.

In fact, government officials noted that even if all was well with the loan deal, "it amounts to overzealousness for the GTB to start deduction in October". This according to them was because since most of the civil servants have used the loan for farming, no farm produce was brought home from farm and therefore the deduction will have adverse effect on the lives of the beneficiaries.

With the ugly scenario taking a different dimension, the governor directed that the salary accounts of all those who collected the loan be transferred from Bank PHB and other banks to the GTB so that the Ministry of Finance, the local government areas and the Universal Basic Education (UBE) which pays primary school teachers would send the salaries of the workers to the GTB after necessary deductions.

"The implication of this is that if for instance any of the teachers dies before he pays the loan, government will not give his entitlements to GTB, but rather directly to the family of the deceased", Mukhtar Isa, a banker in Damaturu, said.

Another implication, according to Mukhtar, was that since the governor was not aware of the actual number of civil servants in the state as the biometric screening is still going on, the NLC might have collected some of the loans with fictitious names.

The NLC chairman has, however said there was no cause for alarm. " "We took adequate measure so that we would not have bad debts and we did all these in the office of the Head of Service which we believe, was also brought to the attention of the governor", he insisted.

Sunday Trust gathered that Islamic clerics have variously spoken against the loan on the grounds that since there is interest on it, it is against Islam, but some workers agreed to collect while others rejected. "Under normal circumstances, the Head of Service should tell the governor, but unfortunately, the governor is claiming that he is not aware which, I believe, is an administrative problem. As far as we are concerned, we have followed the due process and no ghost worker has collected the loan".

He added that all those who collected the money have identification numbers which they got during the biometric exercise conducted by the state government which is a testimony that the person is a genuine civil servant.

"The governor is complaining, saying a lot of things and under normal circumstances, you cannot fight them and we have been trying to explain things to him, that what we did has no political inclination", he added.

He said more than sixty percent of the beneficiaries collected N100, 000 and therefore wondered why they would default in repayment.

An official of the bank also confirmed to our correspondent in Damaturu that the bank has the entire necessary documents to justify the loan between the civil servants in the state.

"As far as we are concerned, we have the entire documents to justify this loan.

If the state governor is saying he is not aware of the loan, I am surprised because all the documents here are signed by the secretary to the state government", the source, who pleaded anonymity said.

Efforts to get more insight from the bank was frustrated as a top officer in the Damaturu branch only gave our reporter a flier containing the website address and the land line telephone numbers of the GTB headquarters.

Further investigations revealed that the salary account of the beneficiaries have already been moved to GTB and deductions have commenced even though some of the workers have started complaining that they have started feeling the negative impact of the loan because what is left for them in their accounts would hardly take them into half of the new month.

This agitation came in the wake of speculations that many of the workers did not go into constructive endeavour with the money. "I can tell you confidently that many of them only got married or bought old cars...I wonder how they are going to pay", Ali Mairiga, a civil servant, said.

But Sani Musa who is a beneficiary of the loan said he invested what he collected in his rice farm in Gashua adding that the farm has blossomed and will soon be harvested.

It is now left to be seen how the imbroglio would be resolved between the NLC, Yobe State government and the GTB in the event leave some of the civil servants either leave the state service or retired before the redemption of the loans.