The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Ahmad Zainab, has made another disclosure concerning how the fiscal condition of the country was handled last month.
Zainab, who admitted that there was a shortfall in the federation allocation committee (FAAC) shortfall in March, said the Federal Government refused to yield to the request of the state governors to borrow from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to augment the N50 billion shortfall.
The minister said this while featuring on Good Morning Nigeria programme, a daily breakfast show on the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA), today.
This is coming days after Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, alleged that the federal government printed N60 billion to support March federal allocation to states.
The allegation has since generated deluge of reactions from economic experts and other Nigerians.
Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, had dismissed Obaseki’s claim describing it as “unfortunate and totally inappropriate.”
Ahmed said that whenever there is reduction in federal allocation, the federal government takes money from some reserve accounts, but in the case of March allocation which fell by N50 billion, all state governments were asked to manage their resources.
“It is a difficult time, I can explain to you how difficult it is not just for the federal government but also for the states, we see increasing reduction in our FAAC revenue,” she said.
“In the month of March, we had a shortfall of FAAC that is almost about N50 billion and we did not have enough accrued in any of those accounts, the states to be honest wanted us to borrow from the Central Bank, but we resisted, we just told everybody to go back to live within what they had.
“So it was very surprising for us when we heard a sitting governor saying that CBN has printed money for FAAC, that was very unfortunate because it is not true.”
