Okonjo-Iweala Exposes Governors Over Excess Crude Oil Account

The Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala-Iweala Sunday said the 36 states of the federation, received a total of N2.92 trillion from the Excess Crude Account between 2011 and 2014. Her disclosure is in response to the accusation by the state governors that the federal government mismanaged funds in Excess Crude Account.
They also claimed that states were sidelined in disbursement of the money. A statement from the Federal Ministry of Finance released Sunday night said that it had become necessary to make the figures public following recent accusations by the Rivers State governor on behalf of state governors.
The statement from the federal ministry of Finance noted that the “figures show that they (states) received N966.6 billion in 2011, N816.3 billion in 2012, N859.4 billion in 2013 and N282.8 in 2014. The low figure for 2014 reflects the steep decline in revenues due to the impact of the crash in global oil prices, which began in the middle of the year.
“Akwa Ibom got the highest with (N265 billion), Rivers (N230.4 billion), Delta (N216.7 billion), Bayelsa (N176.3 billion), Kano (N106.5 billion) and Lagos (N82.9 billion).

“Kwara (N52.8 billion), Enugu (N51.6 billion), Gombe (N47.7 billion), Nassarawa (N46.9 billion), Ekiti (N46.8 billion) and Ebonyi (N44.3 billion) received the least amounts in that order”.
It added that “the summary of the inflows and outflows from the Account shows that the opening balance was $4.56billion in 2011 and reached a peak the following year at $8.7 billion before declining to $2.3 billion in 2013. The balance as at May 2015 is $2.07 billion.”
The statement explained that fluctuation in the ECA “reflects the sharing of the proceeds usually requested by state governors as well as the practice of Augmentation which involves additional sharing from the ECA when available funds are not adequate to meet revenue projections.”
The ministry noted that Subsidy and SURE-P payments were also made from the Excess Crude Account while the Federal Government’s share from the ECA during the period was N3.29 trillion.