The National President of the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE), Ibrahim Khaleel, has accused state governments of bypassing the financial guidelines of the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) to control local governments’ funds.
The NFIU had mandated that no debit would be allowed on any local government funds with effect from June 1, 2019 until the money was credited to the receiving local government.
But speaking to The Punch, Khaleel accused the state governments across the country of forcing local governments to pay levies to them from the fund apportioned to the councils from the federation account.
He said, “The NFIU guidelines started operation on June 1, 2019 but it is being partially complied with by state governments. Banks are restricted by the guidelines that they should not make payment or approve expenditure from the joint accounts to any state governments’ agencies. Any bank that goes against the rule will pay a penalty of 100 per cent of the amount spent. Because of this, the money from the federation account is properly channelled to the local governments.
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“But the major challenge we have observed in all the states is that after releasing the money to the councils, state governments are forcing the councils to return part of the money to state agencies in form of what they call government obligations’ fund.
“These obligations differ from state to state. It is in form of contributions to finance projects like the activities of local government and chieftaincy affairs ministry, road construction, maintenance of universities, hospital maintenance and so on. Ordinarily, these are responsibilities of the state government. It’s like giving money with the right hand and taking it back with the left hand.
“I am saying authoritatively that this is happening in all the 36 states of the federation. For the NFIU guidelines to achieve its purpose, local governments must be allowed to utilise their funds for the benefit of the people and not losing it to unnecessary levies by state governments.”
He added, “We have already drawn the attention of the NFIU and the anti-graft agencies to this development. This is another form of fraudulent activities coming from state governments and it has to be addressed if truly issues of money laundering, financing terrorism and so on must be addressed also.
“During our meeting with the leadership of the NFIU, we gave them facts and figures and they promised to follow up the issue. The truth is that the state governments have devised other means of taking back council funds after paying it to them.”