Paris Club refund: Governors demand balance from FG

-Governors have demanded the balance of the Paris club refund be paid to them by the federal government.

-The demand was made by the governors in a meeting with President Buhari at the Aso Rock Villa.

-They also promised to follow up their requests when the President returns from his Turkey trip. 

The 36 state governors of the federation have requested the federal government to release the 50 percent balance of Paris Club refund to them by November.

Earlier, a total of N760.17 billion, had been paid in two tranches to the state governors by the federal government as refund relating to over deduction from the states’ allocation for external debt servicing between 1995 and 2002.

The governors made the demand on Tuesday, when a delegation of seven governors, led by the chairman of the Nigeria governors forum, Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara state, met with President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa in Abuja.

Those in the delegation were Udom Emmanuel (Akwa Ibom), Atiku Bagudu (Kebbi), Rotimi Akeredolu (Ondo), Abdulfatah Ahmed (Kwara), Abdulaziz Yari (Zamfara), Mohammed Abubakar (Bauchi) and Eric Igwe, deputy governor of Ebonyi.

Briefing state house correspondents after the meeting, Yari, disclosed details of what was discussed at the meeting.

“We are here on behalf of the 36 states governors and this is a result of the collective decision to see the president after the National Economic Council meeting last month,” he said.

“Our mission here is simple, we are here to thank Mr President for his concern about the state of the economy and for giving us support ranging from bailouts, restructuring our debts, Paris club exit payment.

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“We also told him that we think that it was because of his decision to grant us bailouts and pay the refund of the Paris Club that we got out of recession.

“We thanked the president for that and at the same time, as a father, we said to him Mr President you remember that in 2016, we presented to you the numbers of Paris exit funds which we agreed, and you directed we be paid 50percent and the remaining 50 percent open reconciliation.

“Reconciliation has been on since 2016, we are hoping that both the Debt Management Office (DMO), minister of finance, attorney-general of the federation (AGF), and our consultants are concluding this reconciliation by November, so therefore we want to crave your indulgence so that we can factor the numbers in our 2018 budget, so that we can use it for projects and other recurrent spending according to the specification given by our respective house of assemblies and that’s why we are here.

“We are going to work on the numbers when he returns from his trip, we are going to follow up this meeting with him so that we can conclude on what is going to be done next.”