Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State has announced plans to repeal the state’s Public Office Holder (Payment of Pension Law 2007). The law provides for payment of pension and other entitlements to former governors and their deputies.
The governor, who disclosed this on Tuesday while presenting the budget proposal for the 2021 fiscal year to the Lagos State House of Assembly , explained that the decision was aimed at “keeping the costs of governance low and to signal selflessness in public service.”
“Mr Speaker and honourable members of the House, in light of keeping the costs of governance low and to signal selflessness in public service, we will be sending a draft executive bill to the House imminently for the repeal of the Public Office Holder (Payment of Pension Law 2007), which provides for payment of pension and other entitlements to former Governors and their Deputies,” said Governor Sanwo-Olu who presented a budget of N1,155,022,413,005.82.
“It is our firm belief that with dwindling revenues and the appurtenant inflationary growth rates, that we need to come up with innovative ways of keeping the costs of governance at a minimum while engendering a spirit of selflessness in public service”, he said.
Sanwo-Olu also said the restructuring of all existing internal loans from an interest rate of 20 per cent to 12 per cent, and in some cases single-digit interest rates, resulted in a cumulative cost savings of N12 billion, promising that the state’s debt portfolios would be held in local currency to reduce its foreign currency exposure risk.