by Hauwa Gambo

All in day’s job?

The Federal Government, yesterday withdrew, $1bn (N155bn) from the nation’s Excess Crude Account. The money is to be shared among federal, state, and local governments.

According to reports, the minister of State for Finance, Dr. Yerima Ngama, said the amount is to enable states to have liquidity to fund developmental projects. He made this declaration after yesterday’s Federal Accounts Allocation Committee meeting.

The minister said $6.9bn was in the account, while additional $2bn was transferred to give a balance of $8.9bn before the withdrawal.

With the withdrawal of $1bn for sharing among the three tiers of government, the new balance in the account is now $7.9bn

Ngama said the Federal Government’s target for the ECA before the end of the year was $10bn, adding that this would help to stabilise the economy for three months in case of revenue shortfall.

“We have distributed $1bn from the ECA. Our target is $10bn and we hope to hit that before the end of the year. There was $6.9bn in the account and we credited the account with $2bn; and so, we are now comfortable as we can now distribute part of it,” he said.

The operation of the ECA had been a subject of litigation between the Federal Government and the state governments with the Supreme Court giving both parties until September 2, 2012 to resolve their differences.

Already, the Federal Government and the 36 states of the federation have begun to harmonise their different positions on the contentious issue of the operation of the account.

This was the outcome of the National Economic Council meeting held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on July 17.

The council, chaired by Vice President Namadi Sambo, consists of the 36 state governors; minister of State for Finance; governor, Central Bank of Nigeria; and minister of the Federal Capital Territory.

The CBN governor, Mr. Lamido Sanusi, had on July 17 said lawyers of both parties would finalise the agreement and a decision would be taken soon after.

Although he expressed optimism that the issue would be settled amicably, the CBN boss said the case would continue if there was no resolution at the next meeting of NEC.

Apart from the $1bn shared at Wednesday’s FAAC meeting, Ngama said N564.08bn was shared for the month of July.

The amount was, however, N5.3bn lower than the N569.93bn shared by the three tiers of government for the month of June.

Thank God for small mercies.