Kwara State Commissioner for Finance, Alhaji Demola Nurudeen Banu, has described an allegation levelled against the state government by the opposition party, on misappropriation of local governments funds as misleading, saying the state is transparent with local government's funding.

Speaking with journalists at the end of the monthly meeting of Joint Account Allocation Committee (JAAC) in Ilorin, the commissioner, who is also the chairman of JAAC, said that despite a reduction of N2.2 billion from this month's allocation, representing N1.4 million and N800 million for state and local government, respectively, the state government would pay its workers on or before 25th of the month and assist the 16 local governments to pay workers' salary this week.

"It should also be noted that the state has been contributing 10 per cent of its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to the local governments and nothing is coming from the local government to the state. Furthermore, there is no more contribution to the Joint Project account because of the shortfall in allocation," he said.

Banu, who said that the total revenue received for February was N1.971 billion, added that the local governments' expenditure, excluding local governments' salary stood at N1,901 billion.

"If you deduct expenditure from revenue, you will discover that the LGs are left with N70 million whereas they needed N849 million to pay workers salary monthly. It means that LGs needed additional N779 million to pay salary for the month of February 2015," he said.

The commissioner, who said that the states and the local governments in the federation had been experiencing revenue shortfall since August 2013, added that Kwara State had been paying its workers on or before 25th of every month and would continue to assist the councils to pay workers' salary and meet other financial obligations.

Banu also condemned the opposition for spreading malicious information to blackmail the state government, saying that the opposition had refused to commend the state government for being among the four states that are not owing workers' salary and pension.