The Federal Government last night released details of how it shared N6.21tn from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) with the 36 state governments between 2011 and 2014.
The Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, released the breakdown in response to a demand by the Nigeria Governors Forum that she should explain how the over $20bn in the ECA between June 2013 and April 2015 was managed.
The minister, in a statement by her Special Adviser on Communications, Mr. Paul Nwabuikwu, said she needed to make public the details in order to “to clarify issues thrown up by recent claims made by Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State on behalf of some governors”.
According to the details released by Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala, the Federal Government received N3.29 trillion while the 36 states got N2.92trillion from the ECA within the four-year period.
It also showed that the 36 states received N966.6bn in 2011; N816.3bn in 2012; N859.4bn in 2013 and N282.8bn in 2014.
The document attributed the low figure shared in 2014 to a sharp drop in revenues due to the impact of the crash in global oil prices, which commenced in the middle of last year.
Further breakdown of the information released indicates Akwa Ibom State received the highest allocation of N265 billion from the ECA while Rivers and Delta states followed with N230.4 billion and N216.7 billion respectively.
Other states with the highest allocations are Bayelsa, N176.3bn; Kano, N106.5bn and Lagos, N82.9bn.
Kwara (N52.8bn), Enugu (N51.6bn), Gombe (N47.7bn), Nasarawa (N46.9bn), Ekiti (N46.8bn) and Ebonyi (N44.3bn) made up the six states that received the least allocations.