…’FG need not fund a supposedly defeated Book Haram , dissociates self from assent to withdrawn fund from Excess Crude Account’
Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State has alleged the decision to
withdraw $1 billion from the Excess Crude Account to fight Boko Haram
insurgency in the North-East region as surreptitious move by the All
Progressives Congress (APC) led federal government to fund President
Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election in 2019, saying, “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 declared.
In a statement issued in Ado-Ekiti, on Friday, and signed by his
Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka,
Governor Fayose said; “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,” Governor Fayose
said.
The governor said N360 billion was equivalent to what the
Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) share to the federal
government, 36 States and 774 Local Councils monthly, nothing that
“Nigerians deserve proper explanations from the federal government on
the rationale behind spending such huge sum of money to fight an already
defeated Boko Haram.”
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, adding that; “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.”
The governor also alleged that the N50 billion kept by the Nigeria
National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in different commercial bank
accounts outside the Treasury Single Account (TSA) on the directive of
President Buhari’s Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari was part of the fund being
kept to fund President Buhari’s election in 2019.
Governor Fayose continued; “Nigerians are alarmed by the revelation
from the House of Representatives that President Buhari exempted NNPC
from transferring N50 billion to the TSA, and the Central Bank of
Nigeria (CBN), confirmation that a letter issued by the Chief of Staff
(CoS) to the president, Abba Kyari conveyed the directive.
“Also, they 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)?