The Edo State Governor, Mr. Adams Oshiomhole, on Friday alleged that former President Goodluck Jonathan and his Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, jointly denied his state of about N10bn in four years.
He said the sum was an estimate of what could have accrued to his state if the past administration had been faithful in remitting taxes paid by the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Company and Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria into the Consolidated Federation Account the same way the present administration did.
Oshiomhole spoke with State House correspondents shortly after he and former governor of Rivers State, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, met with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The governor claimed that if the $1.6bn NLNG tax that Buhari used as bailout for states had come during Jonathan’s administration, it would have gone the same way it had been going without states benefitting.
He said he was happy with Buhari because he made it clear that he would stop impunity and fragrant disobedient of law and order.
Oshiomhole said, “All the noise that have been generated over what happened last week, there was nothing extraordinary. What was extraordinary is that the NLNG has over the years been remitting funds to the Federal Government but the government illegally refused to transfer these funds to the Consolidated Revenue Fund which belongs to the three tiers of government.
“All that President Buhari has done is to, in line with his commitments to ensuring that all funds and money accruing to the Federation Account are remitted, that he has directed the Central Bank of Nigeria to transfer the funds to the consolidated funds. “Our commissioners along with federal officials met last week to share those funds in line with the revenue allocation formula. If this money had come under the last administration, it will have gone the same way as in previous years.
“The NLNG is not starting fresh to remit. It has been doing that every year plus taxes paid by, I think Shell, amounting to about $500m added to the amount of $1.6bn from the NLNG that total to the amount of $2.1bn. That was the money that was shared.
“Imagine what Edo State got from this renewed transparency and total compliance to the spirit and letter of the constitution. If what we got last week, courtesy of this renewed commitment to transparency, if we had gotten this in the past four years consecutively, we would have made about N10bn.
“So, by the same token, Edo State Government had lost N10bn under Jonathan.”(Punch)
