The All Progressives Congress (APC) has accused Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State and other Governors in the South-South geo-political region of Nigeria of squandering a whopping N950 billion oil money refunded to their States by President Muhammadu Buhari.
This was as the ruling party called on the respective State Assemblies to immediately launch impeachment processes against the Governors over alleged diversion and misappropriation of the oil proceeds.
The ruling party through the Parliamentary Directorate of its Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) for the South-South region called on Wike and others to provide documentary proofs of what they did with refunds released to their States from the Excess Crude Account.
Addressing journalists shortly after the inauguration of members of the APC Parliamentary Campaign Directorate in Abuja on Wednesday, Chairman of the group, Senator Ita Enang said the decision by Wike and others to keep the oil proceeds from the people of their respective States for so long was in gross violation of the Fiscal Responsibility Act and should attract penalties including their impeachment from office.
Making the allegation against Wike and the other South-South Governors, the former Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly Matters explained that the staggering oil monies released to each of the States was refund due to them from arrears of derivation from 2004 and 2019, deductions made by NNPC from 1999 to 2021 as well as refund of 13% derivation from the Excess Crude Account, totalling N950 billion.
According to Enang, Akwa Ibom State
received the highest sum of N128 billion with outstanding sum of N77 billion, followed by Delta State with N110 billion, leaving it with an outstanding of N66 billion.
Rivers State came third with a refund of
N103 billion, and an outstanding of N62 billion.
The group however excluded Cross Rivers State from the fleece and refused to extend same criticisms to other oil producing States like Imo and Ondo State who also benefitted from the refund.
The APC campaign machinery group which is made up of mainly former and serving lawmakers asked the State Assemblies of the affected states to immediately look into the books with a view to finding out how the oil money was disbursed and utilized.
Governor Nyesom Wike had last week during the commissioning of one of his projects in Rivers State called attention to the refund of the oil money to all the oil producing States. While Wike was proud to show off what he has done with the money for the people of Rivers State, he threw a challenge at the Governor of Delta State who is currently the Vice Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP), Ifeanyi Okowa and his counterpart in Edo State, Godwin Obaseki to reveal same.
