Addendum To Earlier Statement On BailOut

• Excess Crude Account: Presidency, APC Flip-Flop Again’

Our attention has been drawn to yet another embarrassing flip-flop by the Presidency and the APC, this time on their depletion of savings in the Excess Crude Account, (ECA) which they earlier announced was to partly finance bailout for states and local governments across the country.

We are indeed shocked that in their spirited effort to ensure that no credit went to the PDP-led administration for saving the money in the ECA, the Presidency and the APC had to make a dramatic U-turn even after the APC had in a release signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, earlier today (Tuesday July 7, 2015) commended the President for approving spending from that account.

The APC had in the release acknowledged that the “multi-pronged approval by President Buhari includes the sharing of the Federal and State Governments of $1.7 billion out of the $2 billion remaining in the ECA; the sharing of about $2.1 billion sourced from the LNG’s payment to the Federation Account; and a CBN-packaged special intervention fund that will offer financing to the states, ranging between N250 billion to N300 billion, as soft loan available to states to access for the purposes of paying backlog of salaries”.

Nigerians were stunned that the APC had to alter its statement soon after PDP’s press release demanding that credit should be given to its past administration for saving the money in the ECA.

When we urged Nigerians to pray for President Buhari, it is because in our estimation, the government was finding it difficult to locate a bearing due to the confusion in his party, consequence of which are these embarrassing flip-flops.