Posted by From LUCKY NWANKWERE, Abuja on
The National Economic Council comprising all the 36 state governors, the Minister of Finance and the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), rose from a meeting in Abuja last night with a firm decision on the sharing of the $4 billion oil windfall.
The National Economic Council comprising all the 36 state governors, the Minister of Finance and the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), rose from a meeting in Abuja last night with a firm decision on the sharing of the $4 billion oil windfall.
Presided over by Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, the meeting agreed that the excess crude money be shared by the states and the Federal Government on a ratio of 80:20 as worked by a committee it earlier set up to work our the modalities for the sharing.
Governor Rotimi Amechi of Rivers State, who was one of those who briefed the State House correspondents on the outcome of the meeting said the payment to the various states would be made in dollars and would commence this month.
To ensure that the release of such a huge amount of money would not bring about inflation in the economy, the meeting, according to him, decided that the money would be used to finance capital construction projects only.
'We also decided that payment will commence February to enable those who have already passed their budgets and those who are still going on with their budgets to factor in properly and commence implementation.
'The payment has been agreed to be in three installments with the first installment coming before the end of February and the other two installments coming subsequently two months thereafter. So after two months, there will be second installment and thereafter the third installment," he stated.
Amechi also said that the governors also agreed to set up a peer review mechanism where states will peer review one another 'and compare notes of what you are doing with the others and see where we can borrow from the other and manage together the economy."
The Minister of Finance, Dr. Shamsudden Usman, who alongside Govenors Babatunde Fashola (Lagos) and Danjuma Goje (Gombe) also briefed the newsmen explained that the money would be paid to the domiciliary account of the states in dollars, saying, 'this is to help in terms of managing the exchange rate impact of large amount of money like this going into the system at one time."