"Ask Your Governors How They Spend Their Allocations"-Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo Iweala

 

While delivering a speech at Babcock university's convocation at Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State, Finance minister Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has challenged state governors to tell Nigerians what they do with the huge allocations they receive regularly from the Federal Government.
According to her, many of the states get monetary allocations that far outweigh the annual budget of some neigbouring countries to Nigeria.
Okonjo-Iweala, who urged Nigerians to be more discerning, noted that the governors had no reason not to develop their states, given the huge amounts they regularly got from Federation Account.
According to her, it is high time Nigerians held their governors accountable over the money collect on their behalf to accelerate development of their states.

Okonjo-Iweala said:

 “Clearly, the Federal Government cannot do it alone; we need the private sector to work with us and we have reached out to them in transforming Nigeria. But, in addition to that, we should ask ourselves what is the role of the state and local governments in supporting our transformation.
“A lot of attention is turned on the Federal Government. So, we also need to ask what our states and local governments do with the resources they get.”

The minister said the states were getting their monthly allocations, adding that the information was being published in the media so that the people would know what accrued to the federal, state and local governments.

She added:

 “We need to ask more questions; poverty eradication and building of infrastructure are not only by the Federal Government. In 2013, the top 10 allocations were going to the following states: Akwa Ibom, N260bn; Rivers, N220bn; Delta N209bn; Bayelsa, N173bn; Lagos, N168bn; Kano, N140bn; Katsina, N103bn; Oyo, N100bn; Kaduna N97bn; and Borno at number 10 with N94bn.

“These were the allocations all these states got last year. The question is what did they do with the money?”

The question  above I doubt many state governors can answer satisfactorily.

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