The Presidency on Wednesday reacted to the claim by the Peoples Democratic Party and those it called the party’s agents that the bail out package released to state governments by President Muhammadu Buhari gave a lie to the president’s claim that he was handed an empty treasury.
The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, in a statement, dismissed the PDP’s claim as creating unnecessary controversy over “the well-intentioned effort” of the President.
But the PDP insisted in a later statement that Buhari and his party APC have been have MIs-represented true position of the country’s finance and specifically the source of the bailout funds for the states.
According to Adesina, the claim by the party’s spokesman, Olisa Metuh, that the past government should be given credit for saving the money that was disbursed is ludicrous.
The statement read in part, “Mr. Metuh’s claim that a significant amount of the funds came from savings accumulated in the Excess Crude Account and handed over to the Buhari administration is completely false and deliberately intended to mislead the public.
“As we clearly stated yesterday (on Tuesday), the funds approved by President Buhari for sharing to the three tiers of government on Monday came entirely from dividends and taxes paid to the Federation Account by the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Company, not from the Excess Crude Account.
“The disbursed NLNG dividends and taxes were paid into the Federation Account in June this year and confirmed by the Central Bank’s statement to the Federal Government on July 7, 2015.
“The funds cannot, therefore, be considered ‘savings’ by the Jonathan administration which left office in May, 2015, as disingenuously claimed by Mr. Metuh.
“Instead of being repeatedly impugned and castigated by the PDP and its agents for honestly telling Nigerians that the nation’s treasury has been immensely depleted and its resources looted or squandered under previous administrations, President Buhari should be commended for the openness, transparency and accountability which he has now brought to the management of national funds.
“It was in keeping with that disposition that the President promptly disclosed the accrual of the NLNG dividends and taxes to the Federation Account at his recent meeting with state governors and approved the convening of a special session of the FAAC to share it.
“As a state governor, who was present at the meeting, remarked, under the past administrations, the states never had the benefit of such disclosures.
“Mr. Metuh and others, who now ungratefully see Monday’s disbursement of the NLNG proceeds as their “legitimate” earnings and not a “bailout” from the Federal Government, may wish to tell Nigerians if such earnings were ever disclosed by the PDP Federal Government and paid to the states in the past.
“The public may also wish to note that the Buhari administration itself has never referred to the actions which it was taken to ease the current financial difficulties of states as a “bailout.”
But the PDP insisted on Wednesday that former president Goodluck Jonathan left “huge sums of money” in the nation’s treasury before handing over to President Muhammadu Buhari.
Olisa Metuh, spokesman of the PDP, said Buhari was misdirected on the actual state of the finances of the country. Metuh insisted that the bailout was taken from the ECA, accusing the federal government of not saying the truth.
Metuh was reacting to the claim by the presidency that the bailout was not taken from the Excess Crude Account.
In a statement late Wednesday, Metuh said, “Contrary to the claim of the presidency that $2.1 billion, being proceeds of the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG), component of the bailout for states was actually saved by the immediate past President Goodluck Jonathan-led PDP administration.”
“The NLNG dividend stood at $5.6 billion even before the handover date of May 29 and would have been shared but for the insistence of former President Goodluck Jonathan that it be left for the incoming administration to manage.”
Metuh would want Buhari to appologise to Jonathan for misinforming Nigerians on the actual state of Nigeria’s finances.
The statement further reads, “It is gratifying to note that gradually the evidence of monies left behind by the PDP-led administration is coming to public light despite effort by the new government to hide the facts,” the statement read. The public had been made aware that $2 billion was left in the ECA for which the accountant-general and the APC confirmed approvals for the withdrawal of $1.7 billion.
“Despite attempts by the APC-led administration to hide the truth, the issuance of the bailout with funds from the NLNG proceeds and the excess crude account has exposed the fact that the PDP administration actually left behind huge sums of money, contrary to the impression earlier given to Nigerians and the international community that the new administration met a virtually empty treasury.
“We know that surely, though slowly, a lot of other monies saved by the PDP and which are now under the control of the APC government will eventually be unveiled by this administration themselves and without any effort on our part whatsoever. President Buhari must have realised that he was earlier misdirected on the actual state of the nation’s finances and should, as a respected statesman, apologise to his predecessor, President Goodluck Jonathan, who also ensured that he handed over to him a peaceful and stable environment to operate.
“President Buhari, as a leader on whose shoulders lies the mandate of the Nigerian people and the burden of governance for the next four years, should strive to disentangle himself from the intrigues, propaganda, blackmail and machinations of some leaders in his party and focus on delivering on his campaign promises for which he was elected.”
PDP said it is most uncharitable for the ruling party to resort to a dishonourable act of altering a statement where it earlier acknowledged the approval for the withdrawal from the ECA, just to hide the truth, leaves much to be desired.
