The governors of the 36 states are no longer willing to allow the federal government to continue to handle roads within their jurisdictions. During the monthly National Economic Council, NEC, on Thursday, the governors pleaded with federal government to hand over all federal roads across the country to state governments.
The NEC meeting chaired by Yemi Osinbajo, Vice President, noted that the Excess Crude Account, ECA, stood at $2.309 billion as at 22nd September, while Stabilisation Account Balance was N4.354 billion as at 26th September.
Dave Umahi, governor of Ebonyi State, told journalists that it was decided at the meeting that the governors would get a strategic plan on how to rescue the dillapidated federal roads. Umahi said that the minister of Finance made a presentation at the NEC on special accounts of the federation and gave the closing balances that also included the Development of Natural Resources Account, which was N84.693 billion as at 26th September, 2017. He said that there was a gentleman agreement entered into between the minister of Finance in the NEC and the 35 governors except Lagos State in a programme called budget support as a result of the down turn of economic challenges that endangers a number of states not being able to pay salaries.
“We came to the understanding that every month the total sharable revenue in the federation account any time if it is less than N600 billion, the minister of Finance will give each state budget support. We concluded that in the last twelve months and that continued for the second year. States have done very well, some states have been able to pay their accumulated salary debts and then also increased their commitment to infrastructure and generation of revenue,” explained Umahi.
Continuing, he said, “However, from July, that was not paid and in the month of August I think about seven states were paid because according to the minister, other states did not comply with the set down rules, the most outstanding of that was the non remittance of VAT from the states. So those seven states have been paid but more states have complied but we requested that those states that have complied should be paid. The good news is that in the month of September, the sharable amount is N630billion so there would be no budget support for the states.”
According to Umahi, the Council was informed that Nigeria was going through the sharpest falls of export revenues in its history, losing over $100 billion (N30 trillion) of national export revenue between 2015 to 2017 due to the crashing oil prices, which resultant effect was recession. “Council was informed that there was urgent need to rapidly ramp up non-oil exports as our future earnings from crude oil faces significant headwinds. The zero oil plan aims at earning at least $30 billion from non-oil sources in the near to medium term as against the current earnings of about $5 billion.”
He explained further that the objective of zero oil plan was to add $150 billion to Nigeria foreign reserves the next 10 years, create 500,000 jobs, lift 10 million Nigerians out of poverty and integrate each state of the federation into the export value chain. “The focus of the plan is on the export of the following crops – rice, wheat, corn, palm oil, rubber, hides and skin, sugar, soya beans and automotive parts among others. Destination countries for our exports include: Netherlands, China, Iran, Germany, United KIngdom, France, Sapin, Italy, India, Saudi Arabia, among others,” he said.