The war of words between Edo State Governor, Mr. Adams Oshiomhole and former Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, over the management of the nation’s finances raged on yesterday as the governor accused the former minister of illegally taking $1 billion from the Federation Account to fund the re-election bid of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
He also challenged Okonjo-Iweala to tell Nigerians how the Excess Crude Account (ECA) was drawn down to $4.1 billion from $10 billion when no approval was given by the National Economic Council (NEC) for any withdrawal. The governor spoke yesterday in Benin at a seminar organised by the state government for permanent secretaries, directors and deputy directors with the theme: “Enhancing IGR in Edo: Issues, prospects and challenges.”
Oshiomhole said Okonjo- Iweala would have been declared a pathological liar if she were a witness in court due to the inconsistencies in her statements. He added that a forensic audit would determine how much was illegally spent from the Federation Account under her watch.
The governor also told participants at the seminar that the state government would hold them responsible for any fraud detected in their departments.
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 for 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.
“As I’m 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 4-figure table and I asked myself, at $2.1 billion remitted by NLNG as taxes and Shell, and by the way, Shell is not the only oil operator, we have Chevron and several others. They shared the $2.1 billion based on the revenue allocation formula and 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 the 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 Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr Okonjo-Iweala, took $2.1 billion without approval and spent it in a manner that was never accounted for, she replied that I lied and said that 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 shouldn’t claim that FAAC is unknown to us.
That FAAC is a creation of law and so on and so forth. “I’m going into this, because, as public servants, you need to understand not just the finances of Edo State, but also the finances of Nigeria, 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 (lied), 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, never resolved to share money from that account. “Now the former Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, confronted with these hard facts, now shifted the argument that ‘oh no, it is not FAAC that approved it, it was the former President Goodluck Jonathan that approved it.
“President Jonathan, as far as the law of Nigeria is concerned, or any president, his approval is limited to funds of the Federal Government; not funds of the federation. Funds of the federation can only be approved by governors and representative of the president as reflected in the composition of the National Economic Council. But there’s so much confusion now that Okonjo-Iweala can say one thing in the morning and tomorrow she will say I never said so. If she were a witness in a court of law, she would be declared a pathological liar whose evidence is of no value. “Now that she claimed she used it, between herself and the last president, they agreed to take the money to pay oil marketers.
But if you talk to those oil marketers, they will tell you that within that period, they were paid $1 billion not $2.1 billion. So in truth, about $1 billion was taken for election purposes.
“For clarity, that is not the only money they have so illegally taken. If you look at the total number at a point, the Excess Crude Account peaked at $10 billion and we now heard it dropped to $4.1 billion. This means at some point, another $6 billion was taken.” However, Okonjo- Iweala in a swift rebuttal, described Oshiomhole’s allegations as baseless.
The former minister, in a statement by her Media Adviser, Mr. Paul Nwabuikwu, said the allegation that $1 billion was allegedly spent out of ECA fund for presidential election “is the kind of ludicrously false statement that has unfortunately become a trademark of the governor in his public campaign of falsehood against Dr Okonjo- Iweala”.
The statement described remarks credited to the governor as ” just another example of the numerical diarrhoea that seems to have afflicted His Excellency in recent times in his effort to damage the reputation of the former minister”.
The statement added that the governor had, within the last few months, asked Okonjo-Iweala to explain all kinds of totally wild and unsubstantiated figures, ranging from $30 billion, $20 billion, $2.1 billion, N720 billion and now $1 billion. “To say the obvious, the accusations are totally lacking in credibility”, said the statement.
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