Immediate past minister of Finance,Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala has affirmed that President Goodluck Jonathan approved all the payments she made for petroleum subsidy.
“Payments made were used for paying for petroleum subsidies for the Nigerian people and were approved by Mr President”she said in a statement issued by her media aide ,Paul Nwabuikwu.
She made the assertion while responding Finance Commissioners who have disowned claims that they approved payments from theExcess Crude Account.
The forum of Commissioners said Tuesday, “It has come to our notice the statement credited to the former Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, that the Federation Account Allocation Committee approved the withdrawal from Excess Crude (Foreign) Account the sum of $2 billion. This statement is far from the fact and is misleading.
“We wish to state unequivocally that FAAC does not have the authority to approve withdrawals from the ECA and, therefore, could not have approved the withdrawal from the Excess Crude (Foreign) Account the sum of $2 billion.
“According to the law setting up FAAC, which pre-dates the ECA, it cannot approve withdrawal and has not done so in the past.
“If anything, FAAC, as records of its meetings indicate, had often queried the activities on the ECA, and, therefore, did not decide any withdrawal.”
Okonjo Iweala said in her reaction thanked “the Finance Commissioners for their clarification on the use of the Excess Crude Account (ECA) and for acknowledging that this is not an Okonjo-Iweala issue” .
“The statement clearly shows that Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) is a statutory body which is chaired by the Hon. Minister of State for Finance in which all the states are represented.
“Therefore there is no question of mismanaging any resources here” ,the ex minister said.
Also the statement said said “at no time did Dr. Okonjo-Iweala say that FAAC approved such expenditures. What she said was that all these expenditures were discussed at FAAC meetings attended by Finance Commissioners from the 36 states.”
“It is therefore clear that there was no misrepresentation by Dr. Okonjo-Iweala.
The former also alleged that there is an excessive attempt to damage her reputation.”The question before us is: why is there such an excessive attempt to batter her name in an attempt to damage her reputation? It is clear as I said in my previous statement that the motive is malicious and very political and therefore will not succeed.
“If monies were used to pay for subsidies for the Nigerian people and duly approved, why is Okonjo-Iweala’s name being battered in this way?
“This persecution should stop”, she said.
