Governor Amaechi refutes FG’s position on federation account

Governor Amaechi of Rivers State

THE Rivers State Government has denied that Governor Rotimi Amaechi was involved in demanding that funds from the Excess Crude Account be shared to augment the shortfall in the Federation Account.

The Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had said that Amaechi was closely involved and actively participated in making requests to the Presidency for the account to be shared among the three tiers of government for the purpose of augmenting the regular allocations from the Federation Account whenever there was a shortfall.

But in a statement signed by the state Commissioner for Information and Communications, Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, the state government insisted that Amaechi and the other governors had only made one request for the sum of $1 billion to be shared from the Excess Crude Account.

The state government explained that there had been no other request from the governors that funds from the Excess Crude Account be shared among the states. It described as mischief the suggestion that Amaechi refused to acknowledge that Rivers State had received the sum of N56.2 billion from the Excess Crude Account between January and September 2013.

“Contrary to the coordinating minister’s claim that ‘Mr. Amaechi was closely involved and actively participated in making requests to the Presidency for the account to be shared for the purpose of augmenting the regular allocations from the Federation Account whenever there was a shortfall’, Governor Chibuike Amaechi and his colleague governors have only attended one meeting where one request was made for the sharing of $1billion from the Excess Crude Account,” the statement read.

Explaining that Rivers and other states of the federation do not have any inkling that the money they received was from the Excess Crude Account, it (state government) described the suggestion by the Finance minister that the savings of 2012 had been used to fund the 2013 budget.

“Neither Rivers nor any other state would have any inkling that the money received by Rivers State government and other state governments for that matter were funded from the ECA.

“According to a communiqué issued by the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation after the June allocation meeting, the sum of N7.617 billion refunded by NNPC and the N35.547 billion from the Subsidy Re-investment Programme (SURE-P) formed part of the total distributable revenue for the month.”