Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole has accused the former government of President Goodluck Jonathan of illegally taking $1 billion from the Federation Account to prosecute re-election project.
Speaking at a seminar organised by the Edo State Government for permanent secretaries, directors and deputy directors, with the theme: “Enhancing IGR in Edo, Issues, Prospects and Challenges,” the governor challenged the former Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to tell Nigerians how the Excess Crude Account was drawn down to $4.1 billion from the peak of $10 billion when no approval was allegedly given by the National Economic Council for any withdrawal.
Oshiomhole said the state government would now hold permanent secretaries, directors and deputy directors responsible for any fraud detected in their departments, saying the government had trimmed down the cost of running government.
He said: “The truth is, many things went wrong even at the federal level. As you might have read in the papers, while the Federal Government, under Goodluck Jonathan, with the then Coordinating Minister of the Economy liked to blame ‘governors’ for wasteful spending, for not saving for the rainy day, for not investing properly, the truth is the real weakness in the Nigerian federal chain has been the Federal Government. Our hope is that with the new president, given his pedigree, we will break from the past.
“I am sure you will soon begin to hear, when all the numbers are published. Last week, I complained aloud that Edo State lost about N10 billion over a four-year period from only one source – the NLNG remittance to the federation account. How did I arrive at the figure? I used my four-figure table and I asked myself at $2.1 billion remitted by NLNG as taxes by Shell, and by the way, Shell is not the only oil operative; we have Chevron and several others. They shared the $2.1 billion based on the revenue allocation formula. Edo State got about N2.27 billion. So I said, thank God this money came after the departure of Okonjo-Iweala and President Jonathan. If the PDP were still in charge in Abuja, this money would have been taken.
“That is not the only money Edo State Government has lost. You have heard of the last installment of $4.1 billion that was in the Excess Crude Account as of November 2014, and from that time till today, we have not; when I say we, federal, states and local governments, have not touched that money. We have not agreed to take anything out of it, and yet it has been drawn down to about $2 billion, which means $2.1 billion disappeared. If you listened and followed the conversation, when I made this allegation after the National Economic Council meeting that the former Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala spent $2.1 billion without approval, she replied that I lied and said it was the commissioners and herself who agreed to distribute that money to the three tiers of government and that FAAC is the most visible expression of our true federalism; and that we should not claim that FAAC is unknown to us. That FAAC is a creation of law and so on and so forth.
“I am going into this, because, as public servant, you need to understand not just the finances of Edo State but also the finances of the country, particularly as they affect our state. Now the Commissioners of Finance met and they looked at themselves and they looked at Okonjo-Iweala and they submitted to Okonjo-Iweala that ‘madam, you lied, not Oshiomhole, because in truth, we have no powers to decide withdrawals from the Excess Crude Account and that that power is vested in the state governors at the level of the National Economic Council’. But whether vested or not, we never, ever resolved to share money from that account.”
Daily Sun
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