States have sent a proposal to President Goodluck Jonathan demanding $2 billion from the foreign Excess Crude Account (ECA) to complete on-going projects and to fund elections
Ebonyi State Commissioner for Finance and Chair of finance commissioners’ forum Mr. Timothy Odaah who stated this last night, said security matters and the elections required large sum of money to execute and that the state governments were optimistic that President Jonathan would favourably consider the proposal.
For the fourth month in a row, the amount shared by out to tiers of government from the Federation Account shrunk. It dropped from N603 billion shared for September to N593.337 for October.
For October, the statutory distributable revenue shared by only the federal, states and local governments was N484.321 billion. N35.549 billion was distributed under the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme ((SURE-P). The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) refunded N6.330 to the federal government of Nigeria while N64.137 billion was shared from Value Added Tax (VAT) proceeds.
All these amounted to the N593.337 shared for October which made the state governments very angry. The reason for their anger The Nation learnt was because the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala announced on Sunday that withdrawals will be made from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) to support the dwindling fortunes of the federation account but at yesterday’s Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting in Abuja, not a kobo was withdrawn from the ECA to augment the shrinking fortunes of the other tiers of government, but N16.822 was transferred into the domestic ECA.
There are strong indications that many states already suffering from poor financial situations may have difficulties paying their workers’ salaries and allowances and there are strong fears that the 2014 Christmas celebrations fast approaching will be bleak in many states.