The Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Mr Wale Edun on Thursday explained why the Federation Account Allocation Committe failed to obey the Supreme Court judgment directing that allocation from the federation account should be paid directly to the local government ‘s account.....KINDLY READ THE FULL STORY HERE▶
The Supreme Court had affirmed the financial autonomy of Nigeria’s 774 local governments.
In the unanimous judgement of its seven-member panel, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the suit brought by the federal government to strengthen the independence of local governments in the country.
A member of the panel, Emmanuel Agim, who delivered the court’s lead judgement, held that the local governments across the country should, from July 11 receive their allocations directly from the Accountant-General of the Federation.
But findings by THE WHISTLER showed that the payment made last week by FAAC was done to the state and local governments joint account controlled by the governors.
Edun who confirmed this during a chat with journalists blamed the development on the inability of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi to get the certified true copy of the Supreme Court judgment.
He said as soon as the Supreme Court judgment gets to the AGF, the payment of allocation from the federation account would be made directly to the local governments.
Edun said, “As far as the Supreme Court ruling on local governments, Mr. President, as a democrat believes in federalism, he believes in fiscal federalism, he fought for it as a state governor. And so what has come to pass now is a new regime, a new fiscal regime where through the state joint local government account funding will go directly to local governments.
“There is a committee composed by the federal honorable Attorney General as well as representatives of the local governments, the states, and of course, the federal government within the context of the Federation Account Allocation Committee. That is the practicality of moving to what the Supreme Court has said.
“There are impediments, practical impediments to immediate implementation, such as the fact that and the governments or governors have moved immediately to hold local government elections because the funds have to go to elected governments, but it’s also in practical terms.
“There was a Federal Account Allocation Committee meeting just last week, but it could not get implemented because in fact, the judgment, the actual proceedings had not been handed down. They were not in the hands of the Attorney General for him to start implementing. So what is going to happen is on the presidency that believes in the rule of law, the supreme court judgment on local governments will be faithfully implemented.”
A total of N1.35tn was last week shared to the Federal Government, States and Local Government Councils in the country.
From the N1.35tn total distributable revenue, the Federal Government received the sum of N459.77bn, the State Governments received N461.97bn and the Local Government Councils received total sum of N337.019bn.
A total of N95.598bn (13 per cent of mineral revenue) was shared to the benefiting States as derivation revenue.