Reported by Nduka Chiejina, Assistant Editor, went on to
point out that “Two weeks after sharing tax proceeds from the Nigerian
Liquefied Natural Gas, NLNG, the three tiers of government yesterday shared a
larger amount of cash from the Federation Account for the month of June than
they did for the month of May 2015.” With all due respects to my colleagues in
the media, this is a story for the front page of every newspaper and headline
news on electronic media.
For those who have lately rained maledictions on the
governors of Nigeria in general, and inexplicably Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola of
Osun state in particular, it might give them a pause for reflection on the true
state of the nation’s economy.
Without defending the governors against charges of
profligate spending, the published allocation for June goes a long way towards
sustaining the point that the fault is not entirely their own – irrespective of
political affiliation, APGA, APC or PDP.
Incidentally, the fault does not belong entirely to the
Federal Government under Jonathan either. A lot of what has happened could be
traced to our faulty federal system, as will be explained later and to external
factors which are totally out of their control.
The majour source of our current problem lies in the federal
government assuming sole responsibility for determining the benchmark of price
and volume of crude exports on which the annual budget is based, exclusively
reporting the revenue generated without verification by the two other tiers of
government, states and Local Governments, and declaring whatever the FG wanted
as gross revenue, distributable revenue and Excess Crude revenue. It was a
“Father knows best” system which had landed us in trouble.
The states, from the 1970s, when crude became the mainstay
of the economy, not just now, had been administered by mentally lazy people –
both as Governors and Commissioners of Finance—without exception. Otherwise,
why should states which depend on revenue from crude for up to eighty (80) per
cent or more of their revenue allow the FG alone to determine all the
parameters mentioned above?
Why should the FG alone determine the benchmark, export
volume, gross revenue and distributable income without checks and verification
by the states? The Governors of states, up till now, had managed their
relationships like members of a religious group based on faith in which the
leader is totally trusted. “Faith”, meanwhile, “is not belief without proof,
but trust without reservation.” (Elton Trueblood, in VANGUARD BOOK OF
QUOTATIONS, p 55).
Unfortunately for the States and LGs, the trust had been
totally misplaced as the current controversy over the disappearance of US$2bn
from the Excess Crude Account, ECA, had demonstrated. That there is a dispute
at all is clear proof that the states and LGs now have started to exercise
doubt – which should have been there all along. That no small group of
individuals can be trusted with funds belonging to others had been the verdict
of history.
That is why there are independent or external auditors to
verify what those in charge declare. Politicians, who should know themselves
better than others should have been the last people to allow the fraud-prone
system foisted on us by the military since 1967 till today to continue. The
result, which should take some, but not all, the heat from the governors, is
shown below between the allocations to states in 2006 and today 2015.
In July 2006, the aggregate to states was N196.26bn when the
price of crude was under US$45 per barrel. In June 2015, nine years after crude
oil at US$56-60 per barrel, “Mrs Anastatia Nwaobia, Permanent Secretary of the
Federal Ministry of Finance, said the sum of N449.68 was shared…the states
shared N111.04bn.
For further reference the states’ allocations in July 2006,
were as follows: Abia, N3.96bn; Adamawa, N3.53bn; A/Ibom, N14.44; Anambra,
N3.61bn; Bauchi, N4.10; Bayelsa, 13.16bn; Benue, N3.8bn; Borno, N4.1bn;
C/River, N3.98; Delta, N15.8bn; Ebonyi, N3.0bn; Edo, N4.2bn; Ekiti, N3.08bm;
Enugu, N3.3.29; Gombe, N3.15bn; Imo, N4.37bn; Jigawa, N3.92bn; Kaduna, N4.29bn;
Kano, N5.55bn; Katsina, N4.30bn; Kebbi, N3.3.59bn; Kogi, N3.5bn; N3.12bn;
N5.49bn; Nass, N2.99bn; Niger, N3.90bn; Ogun, N3.45bn; Ondo N6.95bn; Osun,
N3.33bn; Oyo, N4.19bn; Plateau, N3.0bn; Rivers, N23.25bn; Sokoto, N3.72bn; Taraba,
N3.4bn; Yobe, N3.39bn; Zamfara, N3.53bn.
No state will collect anything close to that now.
The year 2006 was two years after Obasanjo and Okonjo-Iweala
imposed the ECA on the states and the Federal Government commenced robbing the
states blind. In 2006-7 US$13-16bn was withdrawn from ECA for POWER PROJECT
which has not seen the light of day till now. Thus today, states are receiving
less than they did in 2006 –long before the minimum wage reached N18,000 per
month and exchange rate escalated from N150 to N220 per US$1.
The first question we must answer is, how was it possible
that states received N196bn in allocation in 2006, and a mere N111bn in 2015?
The astonishing answer is: the Federal governments of Nigeria under Obasanjo,
Yar’Adua and Jonathan had increasingly kept more than their own share of the
revenue as a result of which the states are being pauperized.
The theft of states and LGs share of aggregate revenue,
which started under Obasanjo, reached its peak under Jonathan. Between 2004,
when ECA started and today, the states and LGs might have been robbed of close
to a trillion naira because they were careless enough to allow the FG to
determine everything about crude oil.
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