Rivers State Governor, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, has gotten the approval of the House of Assembly to access and withdraw the sum of N19 billion from the state’s reserved fund, Leadership reports.
Meanwhile, the reserved fund was set up through a law of the House of Assembly in 2008, which directed the state government to mandatorily save the sum of N1 billion every month.
Governor Rotimi Amaechi
It was gathered that all the 22 lawmakers who were present at the sitting unanimously voted for the approval of the request after House Leader, Hon Chidi Lloyd requested for the approval of the governor’s request which was dated October 20, 2014, and made known to the lawmakers by the Speaker, Rt Hon. Otelemaba Dan-Amachree.
Lloyd, a members representing Emohua Constituency in the House in his submissions explained that the reason for savings is to mitigate the effects of difficult times.
“The request before us couldn’t have come at a better time. The essence of saving is for rainy days such as this. We are lucky that we are approving the governor to access funds that have been saved. These funds will be ploughed in ensuring that in line with the policy of government not to leave any project abandoned; government will channel these funds towards completing capital projects,” he said.
However, the chairman of the House committee on Finance, Hon Josiah John Olu, after the sitting told journalists that the request became imperative in order for the state government to continue running as there was no allocation to the states in the last Federal Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting.
The chairman, who is a member representing Eleme Constituency in the House further revealed that the governor sent a request to the House seeking approval to access N19 billion of the state’s reserved fund. He said the permission was granted because the money the state received from FAAC, the centre is dry, adding that for this particular month, the commissioner of finance and the accountant-general after coming back from the FAAC meeting hinted that there was no money to share to the states.
“You know the magnitude of projects that the government has embarked upon. It’s important that we access those funds so that we could be able to pay our contractors; so that government can function, so that government can run. Let’s not also forget that this is money that was saved by this present administration. The 6th Assembly passed a law that we should be saving one billion naira every month for the rainy day. The rainy day is here and that is why we are trying to access the fund. We are not borrowing, Rivers Assembly did not approve any borrowing for the governor to access money from any bank we are just accessing our own reserve fund so that we can meet our obligations,” Olu said.
The lawmaker also disclosed that the state government is yet to access the N50 billion first trench loan that was earlier approved by the Assembly.
“I want to tell Rivers people that this Assembly approved that the governor can go to the bond market to access a one hundred billion naira bond, which the governor came back, we broke it into two trenches. The first trench was supposed to be N50 billion. It is important for us to know that we have not accessed even that N50 billion. Anybody that knows the process that is involved in accessing funds from the money market as it relates to bonds knows that its a tedious work,” he said.
Olu further cleared the air that since they had not yet accessed the previous N50 billion, it’s not part of the state debt profile then, revealing that Rivers is one of the states least indebted because it always service its loans and debts. He said all that is gotten from Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, is earmarked on servicing the loans so that when the governor leaves office his successor will have very little debt to pay.
Meanwhile, the governor on October 17, 2014, stated that a successful fight against Ebola in Nigeria is a lie while reacting to Federal Government claims that Rivers and Lagos are free of the deadly virus.
source naij.com