How Over $2.2bn Excess Crude Account Was Reduced To $71.8m – Accountant-General Reveals

Nigeria’s accountant-general of the federation, Ahmed Idris, has explained how the President Buhari led government spent over 2.1 billion dollars from the excess crude account (ECA).

Idris who gave the revelation on Tuesday at a meeting with the members of the senate committee on finance to explain the Federal Government’s achievements so far on the revenue projection for 2020 and why the excess crude account got depleted from $2.2 billion which the Buhari administration inherited to $71.8 million.

Giving a breakdown of the funds in ECA over the years, Idris said the ECA balance moved from $2.2 billion in 2015 to $2.6 billion in 2016, $2.4 billion in 2017, and $631.4 million in 2018. He said the money stood at $325 million as at 2019 but reduced to $71.8 million after $250 million was invested in the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) as agreed by the national economic council.

Ahmed Idris also revealed that a lawyer was paid $4 million as consultancy fee from the Excess Crude Account. According to Idris, inflows into the ECA have witnessed a downward trend because of low oil prices.

For the inflows into ECA, the accountant-general said in 2015, the total inflow was $2.35 billion, which increased to $3.68 billion in 2016, and reduced to $3.38 billion in 2017.

He added the inflow jumped to $3.5 billion in 2018 but crashed to $1.01billion in 2019. The Buhari administration once withdrew $1 billion from the account to be used to tackle insecurity.