By Jonathan Okpanachi
The federal government will stop paying federation allocations belonging to local governments to state governments’ joint accounts from next month.
Recall that the Supreme Court ruled that allocations from the federation account should be paid directly to the local governments’ accounts.
Finance Minister Wale Edun told newsmen on Thursday that LG allocations for July were released to states because Justice Minister Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) was yet to get the certified true copy of the Supreme Court judgment.
According to him, as soon as the Supreme Court judgment gets to the AGF, the payment of allocation from the federation account would be made directly to the local governments in line with the rule of law.
Edun said, “Mr President believes in fiscal federalism, and he fought for it as a state governor. And so, what has come to pass now is a new regime, a new fiscal regime where through the state joint local government account funding will go directly to local governments.
“There is a committee composed by the federal honorable Attorney General as well as representatives of the local governments, the states, and of course, the federal government within the context of the Federation Account Allocation Committee. That is the practicality of moving to what the Supreme Court has said.
“There are impediments, practical impediments to immediate implementation, such as the fact that the governments or governors have moved immediately to hold local government elections because the funds have to go to elected governments, but it’s also in practical terms.
“There was a Federation Account Allocation Committee meeting just last week, but it could not get implemented because the judgment, the actual proceedings had not been handed down. They were not in the hands of the Attorney General for him to start implementing. So, what’s going to happen is on the Presidency that believes in the rule of law. The supreme court judgment on local governments will be faithfully implemented.”
Our correspondent reports that a total of N1.35tn was shared last week to the federal government, states, and local government councils in the country.
The federal government received the sum of N459.77bn, the state governments received N461.97bn, and the local government councils received total sum of N337.19bn. A sum of N95.598bn (13 per cent of mineral revenue) was shared to the benefiting states as derivation revenue.
