Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose has described the decision to
withdraw $1 billion from the Excess Crude Account to fight Boko Haram
insurgency in the North-East region as a means by the All Progressives
Congress (APC) led federal government to fund President Muhammadu
Buhari’s re-election in 2019.
“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 777 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 said;
“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)?
“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 pretense of fighting insurgency in the Northeast as
well as other dubious means.”