PM News reports say Buhari taken a cue from Jonathan, by taking money from the ECA to share to states in a bid to help ease the financial burden on them.
Buhari Is Spending Excess Crude Account Funds Like Gej
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The Nigerian leader reportedly took money from the ECA to help the financially-burdened states as against the real reason the account was created by former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, in 2004.
The federal government had on Monday, July 6, agreed to share about N391bn ($1.7bn) from the Excess Crude Account among the state governments following their inability to pay their workers’ salaries.
Accountant General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, had said: “the position is very clear, what we met on ground is what we are going to distribute. What we met on ground is hovering between $1.6bn to $1.7bn, and that is what we are going to distribute among all the three tiers of governments based on the approved formula.”
But, Raymond Omachi, acting chairman of Fiscal Responsibility Commission (FRC) frowned at the practice of the federal government spending the ECA to pay subsidy or to share from the account to states when available funds are not adequate to meet revenue projections.
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According to him, the ECA was established in 2004 to protect planned budget against shortfalls due to volatile crude oil prices, and not how the funds from the account are being spent.
“If the ECA had been properly managed, in accordance with the FRC act, the country will not have been embroiled in the liquidity crisis being presently experienced,” he said.
Omachi, who was still furious over the manner of expenditure of the funds from the ECA, state that the FRC Act stated that savings from the ECA should not be accessed until oil price falls below the predetermined level for a period of three consecutive months, noting that the sum accessed should be limited to the amount that would bring the revenue of government to the level contained in its budget estimates.
He said: “In essence, the non-compliance with the relevant sections of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007, is the cause of the financial management problem being experienced by the country in the light of the sliding oil price.
“If the account had been intact, the effect of declining oil price will have been accommodated with the ECA buffer to finance the budget.”
The president was also mocked by some Nigerians last week for his slow pace in getting things done, and was called ‘Baba Go Slow’.
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