President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday vowed to recover billions of dollars stolen under the administration of his immediate predecessor, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan.
He said the Jonathan government threw the nation into a financial crisis by throwing all financial and administrative processes in parastatals and agencies to “the dogs”
Promising that the era of impunity and financial recklessness was over, the President said the next 90 days might be hard for the Federal Government and the states.
“The next three months may be hard, but billions of dollars can be recovered, and we will do our best,” Buhari said in a statement made available to journalists after his meeting with the 36 state governors in Abuja.
But he did not state how he would go about the recovery of the looted funds.
Buhari regretted that the impunity, lack of accountability and financial recklessness in the management of national resources by the past administration threw the country into a situation that is worse than what happened in the Second Republic.
The President, in the statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, added, “There are financial and administrative instructions in every government parastatal and agency.
“But all these were thrown to the dogs in the past. Honestly, our problems are great, but we will do our best to surmount them.”
He said that a comprehensive statement on the economic and financial situation inherited by his administration would be made public within the next four weeks.
“We will try and put the system back into the right position. What happened in the 2nd Republic has apparently happened again, and even worse, but we will restore sanity to the system,” Buhari assured the governors.
It will be recalled Buhari toppled the Second Republic government of President Shehu Shagari on December 31, 1983 on allegations of corruption and gross mismanagement.
The President, according to the statement by Adesina, expressed surprise that governors had been tolerating the atrocities allegedly committed in the management of the Excess Crude Account since 2011.
He then promised to tackle the issue decisively.
The President also declared that the payment of national revenue into any account other than the Federation Account was an abuse of the constitution.
He added that most of what he heard going on in many agencies and corporations, particularly the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, were clearly illegal.
On the refund of money spent on federal projects by state governments, Buhari assured the governors that the Federal Government would pay, but insisted that due process must be followed.
The President said that special assistance would be given the three North-East states badly affected by the Boko Haram insurgency.
On an immediate lifeline for states that have yet to pay their workers for months, the President said that a committee headed by Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo would look into the ECA and come up with an amount that could be shared immediately.
The governors, led by their Chairman, Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara State, had presented a wish list to the President.
The wish list included:
Obedience of extant Supreme Court ruling that all money goes into the Consolidated Federation Account;
An order from the President that all revenue generating agencies must pay into the Consolidated Federation Account;
Review of the Revenue Allocation Formula;
Refund of the monies expended by states on federal projects;
A special consideration for the three states of the North-East under Boko Haram infestation; and
Full details of the amounts that accrued into the ECA from 2011 and how the money shrank without official sharing.
As of May 15, 2015, only $2.79bn was left in the ECA.
Source: Punch
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