The crisis rocking the Nigeria Governors’ Forum has started affecting the finances of some states, this newspaper has learnt.
Our correspondent gathered that since the crisis started, governors had not been able to take a common stand on the Federation Account dispute and agree on how to share money from the Excess Crude Account.
Already, some of the affected governors are said to have started making subtle moves to resolve the crisis to enable them to confront the Federal Government on the issue.
A governor from the North-Central, who confided in one of our correspondents, said, “We are in a dilemma now. Before this NGF crisis started, the governors would have asked their chairman to call a meeting to discuss our finance and the excess crude account.
“But since the factionalisation of the forum, we have not been able to take a common stand and this is affecting some states that depend almost 100 per cent on the money from the Federal Government to pay salaries and do other things in their states.
“It is like the Federal Government is now taking the advantage of the crisis to cheat us. Look at what happened at the FAAC meeting on Thursday. We are now being short-changed and we have no voice to fight for us.”
This newspaper learnt that the concerns expressed by some governors have led the factional chairman of the NGF, Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State, to convene an emergency meeting of the forum for Monday to discuss the matter.
In the notice of meeting issued by Jang, it was indicated that the NGF meeting would hold at 6pm at the faction’s secretariat, while there would be another meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan at 9pm “in view of the impasse arising from the Federation Allocation Accounts Committee meeting.”
Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State had won the NGF election with 19 votes as against Jang’s 16 but some governors had disputed the results and claimed that Jang was the one elected.
On Thursday, members of the Forum of Commissioners of Finance had stormed out of the monthly meeting of the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee.
The meeting was conveyed to share the federally collected revenue for May, but the commissioners alleged that over N60bn was still outstanding.
They had argued that the Friday meeting could not hold because the arrears of February had not yet been paid and that the Federal Government did not tell them when the arrears would be paid.
Chairman of FCFN, Mr. Eze Echesi, alongside his colleagues from other states told reporters on Thursday in Abuja that the reason for the boycott was to take “this message to the state governors so that they will put heads together to meet with the President (Jonathan) and every other well-meaning entities of the federation so that these problems will be resolved once and for all.”
The commissioners said the delay in disbursing the arrears had caused hiccups in fund flow of the states and their local governments resulting in their inability to pay contractors and salaries.