By Reno
Omokri
It is quite possible that Mr. Rotimi Amaechi is losing his
marbles otherwise why else would he be asking former President Goodluck Jonathan
to account for the $65 billion that former President Olusegun Obasanjo left in
the Excess Crude Account when there was never any such amount? Former President
Olusegun Obasanjo and the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria who
served under his tenure, Professor Charles Soludo are both alive and
journalists can take advantage of the Freedom of Information Act signed into
Law by former President Jonathan to verify from them if there was ever any $65
billion in the Excess Crude Account.
*Rotimi Amaechi |
The Jonathan administration met $6.5 billion in
the Excess Crude Account upon inception in 2010 and not $65 Billion as wrongly
asserted by Rotimi Amaechi. In fact, the Jonathan Government ought to be
praised for increasing the amount in the ECA to almost $9 billion by 2012.
However, the Nigerian Governors Forum led by no
other person than Rotimi Amaechi, using their influence at the House of
Representatives, had gotten that August body to declare the Excess Crude
Account illegal in 2012. So excruciating was the pressure from the Nigerian
Governors Forum and most notably from the then Rivers State Governor, Rotimi
Amaechi, (now the Minister of Transport) for the Jonathan administration to end
the Excess Crude Account and the Sovereign Wealth Fund regimes and instead
share the funds in those accounts amongst the three tiers of government that
they approached the Supreme Court, to challenge the legality of the Excess
Crude Account and then President Jonathan’s decision to transfer $1 billion
from that account to the Sovereign Wealth Fund.
In fact, after hosting a meeting of the forum
on September 21, 2012, at the Rivers State Governor’s Lodge in Abuja , Rotimi Amaechi said
inter alia: “On the Excess Crude Account,
Forum unanimously decided to head back to Court to enforce the Federal
Government’s adherence to the constitution.”
To those who do not know what the Constitution
says, let me give you an insight by quoting from Section 162. Section 162,
provides that:
(1)The Federation shall maintain a special
account to be called ‘the Federation Account’ into which shall be paid all
revenues collected by the Government of the Federation, except the proceeds
from the personal income tax of the personnel of the Armed Forces of the
Federation, the Nigeria Police Force, the Ministry or department of government
charged with responsibility for Foreign Affairs and the residents of the
Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
(2) The
President, upon the receipt of advice from the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation
and Fiscal Commission, shall table before the National Assembly proposals for
revenue allocation from the Federation Account, and in determining the formula,
the National Assembly shall take into account, the allocation principles
especially those of population, equality of States, internal revenue
generation, land mass, terrain as well as population density;
(3) Any
amount standing to the credit of the Federation Account shall be distributed
among the Federal and State Governments and the Local Government Councils in
each State on such terms and in such manner as may be prescribed by the
National Assembly.
From the above, it was clear what the Amaechi-led
Governor’s Forum wanted. Mr. Amaechi led the governors in taking the Federal
Government to court. The Jonathan administration offered an out of court
settlement with the governors in a deal that would have seen the federal
government sharing some of the money and saving up the rest for Nigeria’s
future but the governors rejected the offer. In fact, the Jonathan
Administration had argued at the Supreme Court that sharing the money in the
ECA would affect “the day to day running
of the nation’s economy”.
Working in tandem with Mr. Amaechi and his
supporters in the Nigerian Governors Forum, the then minority All Progressives Congress
(APC) members of the House of Representatives approached a Federal High Court
on the 7th of February, 2014, for a perpetual injunction restraining the Jonathan
administration from operating the ECA and to pay all the proceeds of that
account into the Federation Account for sharing amongst the three tiers of
government.
As a result of these actions, the Jonathan
administration paid the 36 states of the federation a total of N2.92 trillion
from the Excess Crude Account between 2011 and 2014. Using the value of the
Naira at that time that amount was just above $20 billion dollars. So it is
quite clear that anyone who accuses the Jonathan administration squandering $65
Billion ECA funds is speaking in ignorance.
What I would advise Rotimi Amaechi to do is to
take his own advise from last week when he said: “I agree with those who said we
should stop criticising the last government and that we should do our own.”
It is very wrong for Rotimi Amaechi to keep
blaming the Jonathan administration while at the same time enjoying the fruits
of its labour like the Abuja-Kaduna railway and the national railway that was
revived by the Jonathan government after years of being moribund. If they are
drinking from Jonathan’s well, let them appreciate the man who dug the well.
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