Wednesday, 13 December 2017
The Ignoramus Rotimi Amaechi with Facts to Prove it – Reno Omokri
It is quite possible that Rotimi
Amaechi is losing his marbles otherwise why else would he be asking former
President Jonathan to account for the $65 billion that former Olusegun Obasanjo
left in the Excess Crude Account when there was never any such amount?
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and
the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria who served under his tenure,
Professor Charles Soludo are both alive and journalists can take advantage of
the Freedom of Information Act signed into Law by former Jonathan to verify
from them if there was ever any $65 billion in the Excess Crude Account.
Rotimi Amaechi is a notorious ignoramus
who speaks without thinking and it is suspected that either he is speaking
under the influence of drugs or he is going senile.
The reason I say so is because Rotimi
Amaechi as Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum is precisely the reason why
the Excess Crude Account had to be phased out and below are the facts:
The Jonathan administration met $6.5
billion in the Excess Crude Account upon inception in 2010 and not $65 Billion
as wrongly asserted by Rotimi Amaechi. In fact, the Jonathan Government ought
to be praised for increasing the amount in the ECA to almost $9 billion by
2012.
However, the Nigerian Governors
Forum led by no other person than Rotimi Amaechi, using their influence at the
House of Representatives, had gotten that August body to declare the Excess
Crude Account illegal in 2012.
So excruciating was the pressure from
the Nigerian Governors Forum and most notably from the then Rivers state
Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, (now the minister of transport) for the Jonathan
administration to end the Excess Crude Account and the Sovereign Wealth Fund
regimes and instead share the funds in those accounts amongst the three tiers
of government that they approached the Supreme Court, to challenge the legality
of the Excess Crude Account and then President Jonathan’s decision to transfer
$1 billion from that account to the Sovereign Wealth Fund.
In fact after hosting a meeting of the
forum on September 21, 2012, at the Rivers state Governor's lodge, Rotimi
Amaechi said inter alia:
“On the Excess Crude Account, Forum
unanimously decided to head back to Court to enforce the Federal Government’s
adherence to the constitution."
To those who do not know what the
Constitution says, let me give you an insight by quoting from Section 162.
Section 162, provides that
“(1) The Federation shall maintain a
special account to be called ‘the Federation Account’ into which shall be paid
all revenues collected by the Government of the Federation, except the proceeds
from the personal income tax of the personnel of the Armed Forces of the
Federation, the Nigeria Police Force, the Ministry or department of government
charged with responsibility for Foreign Affairs and the residents of the
Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
“(2) The President, upon the receipt of
advice from the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, shall
table before the National Assembly proposals for revenue allocation from the
Federation Account, and in determining the formula, the National Assembly shall
take into account, the allocation principles especially those of population,
equality of States, internal revenue generation, land mass, terrain as well as
population density;
“(3) Any amount standing to the credit
of the Federation Account shall be distributed among the Federal and State
Governments and the Local Government Councils in each State on such terms and
in such manner as may be prescribed by the National Assembly.”
From the above it was clear what the
Amaechi led Governor's forum wanted.
Mr. Amaechi led the governors in taking
the Federal Government to court. The Jonathan administration offered an out of
court settlement with the governors in a deal that would have seen the federal
government sharing some of the money and saving up the rest for Nigeria’s
future but the governors rejected the offer.
In fact, the Jonathan Administration
had argued at the Supreme Court that sharing the money in the ECA would affect
"the day to day running of the nation’s economy".
Working in tandem with Mr. Amaechi and
his supporters in the Nigerian Governors Forum, the then minority APC members
of the House of Representatives approached a Federal High Court on the 7th of
February, 2014, for a perpetual injunction restraining the Jonathan administration
from operating the ECA and to pay all the proceeds of that account into the
Federation Account for sharing amongst the three tiers of government.
As a result of these actions, the
Jonathan administration paid the 36 states of the federation a total of N2.92
trillion from the Excess Crude Account between 2011 and 2014. Using the value
of the Naira at that time that amount was just above $20 billion dollars.
So it is quite clear that anyone who
accuses the Jonathan administration squandering $65 Billion ECA funds is
speaking in ignorance.
What I would advise Rotimi Amaechi to
do is to take his own advise from last week when he said “I agree with those
who said we should stop criticising the last government and that we should do
our own”
It is very wrong for Rotimi Amaechi to
keep blaming the Jonathan administration while at the same time enjoying the
fruits of its labour like the Abuja-Kaduna railway and the national railway
that was revived by the Jonathan government after years of being moribund. If
they are drinking from Jonathan’s well, let them appreciate the man who dug the
well.
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