Nigeria Content Online

The Federation
Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) last Friday held an emergency
meeting in Abuja to disburse the sum of $1 billion (about N150 billion)
from the Excess Crude Account to the three tiers of government.

The meeting, coming
barely two weeks since it met last, lasted for less than half an hour,
and largely secretive, as the chief press secretary, Ministry of
Finance, Usman Nakorji, declared it was not for press coverage.

“Please don’t put me into trouble,” Mr. Nakorji pleaded.

“The meeting was
not meant for press coverage. It was an emergency, that is why they
said they did want the press to cover it,” he told anxious journalists,
who were interested to find out details about what informed the meeting
less than 24 hours to the end of the year.

It was, however,
gathered that President Goodluck Jonathan may have given approval for
the disbursement of the money following pressures from the state
governors as a trade off for their pledge to support his bid to secure
the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) presidential ticket during its
forthcoming primaries scheduled for January 11.

Yawaba Lawan-Wabi,
the minister of state for finance, who presided over the meeting, which
lasted between 11:11 and 11:39 a.m., told reporters that the committee
got the presidential approval to meet and share the money among the
three tiers of government.

Presidential approval

“We are here now
because we got approval from the president to share $1 billion from the
Excess Crude Account (ECA) among the three tiers of government. We are
doing this because the ECA is a financing item of the 2010 budget of
both the federal and state governments,” Mrs. Lawan-Wabi said.

Against the
background of insinuations that the timing of the disbursement of the
money suggests it is politically-motivated, the minister justified the
decision, saying the three tiers of government needed to share the
money considering the recent approval by the National Assembly to
extend the 2010 budget year for capital projects to March 2011.

Details of the
disbursement indicate that the Federal Government would take $458.316
million, or 52.68 percent; 36 states, $232.464 million, or 26.72
percent; while $179.220 million, or 20.60 percent would go to the Local
Governments Councils, and $130 million, or 13 percent, would go to the
nine oil producing states as oil derivation revenue.

The immediate past
Accountant General of the Federation, Ibrahim Dankwambo, had during the
last FAAC meeting, announced that the balance of revenue in the
dollar-denominated ECA was about $1.9 billion.

With the latest
disbursement, it was learnt that the ECA, which had a balance of over
$20.01 billion as at July 2009, has now been depleted to about $3
million, excluding the $1 billion set aside for the proposed Sovereign
Wealth Fund (SWF).

Chairman,
Commissioners of Finance Forum, Rebo Usman, told journalists that the
emergency meeting became necessary to enable the committee give effect
to the presidential approval on the strength of the recommendation of
the National Economic Council (NEC) for the disbursement to the three
tiers of government for ongoing special projects in their domains.

“There is no way we
(FAAC) could have brought out money from the excess crude account
without the meeting of the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee. We
had to convene the emergency meeting to take care of that decision by
the NEC,” Mr. Usman said.

Denying that the
disbursement was a new year bonanza for the states, he said the ECA is
savings for the states and Federal Government to fall back on whenever
they believe there is a need to fund some ongoing special projects,
pointing out that he is not worried that the account has gone down to
about $3 million, as government is planning to create the Sovereign
Wealth Fund for infrastructure development and immediate national needs.