Ebonyi Finance Commissioner Says States Spend 30% Of Monthly Allocation On Security

The Ebonyi State Finance Commissioner, Timothy Odaah on Wednesday revealed that the states spend over 30 percent of their monthly allocation on security.

Odaah who disclosed this while fielding questions from finance journalists after the monthly Federation Accounts Allocations Committee (FAAC) meeting in Abuja explained that the situation is partly responsible for the non-payment of workers salary.

Reports say that several states in the country have been unable to pay their workers salary with Benue State owing as much as 6 months.

Odaah, who also doubles as the Chairman of Forum of Finance Commissioners also insisted that the continuous payment of subsidy by the Federal Government to oil marketers had further reduced the amount each state gets as allocation from the Committee.

He therefore called for not only the removal of subsidy but also the scrapping of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-) which according to him is an ‘albatross’.

“It is an irony. There is nothing magical about SURE-P. Ordinarily, whatever any state has it suppose to be part of its monthly allocation. States  should be given their full monthly allocation so that they can use to do what they are suppose to do, especially now that some states are owing their staff.

“Beside that subsidy is suppose to be a surplus but the benchmark is not been met, so what is subsidy?

He noted that those calling for the continued payment of subsidy are those that are benefitting from the scheme saying that it is a ‘ploy by some people to milk the country dry’.

Earlier, the Committee distributed to the three tiers of government the sum of N522.052 billion for the month of February. The amount distributed by the FAAC rose by N21.922 billion.

Giving a breakdown, the Minister of State for Finance, Bashir Yuguda puts the statutory distributable revenue for the month at N401.467 billion. Added to that is the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) refund of N6.330 billion. Also distributed is the exchange rate of N55.99 billion and the Value Added Tax (VAT) of N55.926 billion.

Yuguda further said that the last FAAC, an additional N45 billion was distributed among the 36 states of the Federation.

The Minister revealed that Nigeria lost about $24.48 million in revenue due to the further drop in the crude oil prices in December and January 2015. Similarly, the persistent shut down and shut-in of trunks and pipelines at various terminals, the Minister said, have continued to impact negatively on the revenue performance.

Non oil revenue dipped further in February at (N94.523 billion in relation to January which stood at N110.699 billion. previous.

However, there was no augmentation as well as money from SURE-P due to falling oil prices, Yuguda said.