Ayodele Fayose, governor of Ekiti
state, has opposed the decision of the national economic council (NEC) to
approve $1 billion for the fight against insurgency.
At the end of the NEC meeting on
Thursday, Godwin Obaseki, governor of Edo state, said all the governors had
agreed that the money should be taken from the excess crude account (ECA).
But in a statement on Friday,
Fayose said he is not among those who gave the approval.
He alleged that the All
Progressives Congress (APC) had the plan to use the money to fund President
Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election.
“For posterity sake, I wish to
place it on record that I was not among the governors who approved the
withdrawal of almost half of our savings in the Excess Crude Account, which
belongs to the three tiers of government to fight an already defeated
insurgency,” he said in a statement
issued on his behalf by Lere Olayinka, his spokesman.
“Since they said they have
defeated Boko Haram, what else do they need a whopping sum of $1 billion (over
N360 billion) for; if not to fund the 2019 elections?
“The APC promised to wipe out
Boko Haram within six months, now it is 31 months and what the APC government
is wiping out is the economy of Nigeria and the means of livelihood of the
people.”
He challenged the federal
government to make available to Nigerians, how the money released by
international donors for the fight against Boko Haram was spent.
“Even the Transparency
International (TI) once said in its report that some top military officials in
the country were feeding fat from the war against Boko Haram by creating fake
contracts and laundering the proceeds in the United States, United Kingdom and
elsewhere,” he said.
“Nigerians are miffed by the
federal government’s idea of withdrawing $1 billion from the Excess Crude
Account to fund an insurgency they said had been defeated.
“They went on to tell Nigerians
that the decision was taken by governors of the 36 States, whereas, it was
solely the idea of the federal government, which they used the arranged
National Executive Council meeting to achieve.
“The question is; how can the
federal government alone spend almost half of the Excess Crude money that
belongs to the three tiers of government (i.e. Federal Government, States and
Local Councils)?
“The reality is that our treasury
is daily being looted in readiness for the 2019 elections. Nigerians are
therefore alerted to this lootings by the APC led federal government to amass
huge fund for the 2019 elections under the pretence of fighting insurgency in
the Northeast as well as other dubious means.”
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This village Governor is still talking rubbish. Anyway her is on his own.
ReplyDeleteIf $1 billion is going to be taking from excess crude account at $52/barrel. We can imagine how much PDP wasted from the same account with $120/barrel.
ReplyDeleteMore than this was spent during PDP with no effect until few month to election. We all know the story.
How the money will be spent should be detailed to justify it