The Ekiti State Commissioner for Finance, Chief Toyin Ojo, has called for a speedy process to separate the office of the Accountant General of the Federation from that of the Accountant General of the Federal Government.
Ojo said doing so would engender a smooth reconciliation of the federation accounts and equitable distribution of resources accruing to the accounts.
The commissioner, who spoke in Ado Ekiti, said that such an action would be in the best interest of Nigeria as a nation, stressing that the three tiers of government should have equal rights and access to the federation accounts as it’s normally applicable under the Federal system of government that Nigeria operates.
Citing the failure of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation to often reconcile its accounts, which had led to several inconclusive sitting of the Federation Account Allocation Committee
and the instances where the Federal Government unilaterally took money to pay debt owed the Paris Club without the consent of the other two tiers of government, Ojo stressed that it was high time such anomalies were corrected.
He particularly called for transparency and accountability in the activities of the NNPC towards ensuring equity and proper disbursement of funds to the three tiers of government.
The commissioner also described the sharing formula, whereby the Federal Government takes a whooping 52percent while the 36 States and the 774 local government areas share just about 48percent as unjust, especially with the current type of leadership in the country.
He added that it’s ironic that the same set of people that seriously advocated “true Federalism” while they were in opposition had now become averse to the same concept, stressing that the lopsided sharing formula which unduly favoured the Federal Government had continued to contribute to massive corruption and colossal theft of public funds by unscrupulous public officials, who subsequently had unfettered access to excess funds.
The commissioner further described the failure of the Federal Government to pay states the outstanding 50 percent of the Paris Club refund as a grand conspiracy to control activities of state governments and slow down their development for selfish political reasons.
