CHAIRMAN of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) and Ekiti State governor, Kayode Fayemi, has said the Federal Government cannot commence its plans to make deductions from the federation account for payment of consultants for the Paris Club refund now. 

Governor Fayemi stated this while fielding questions from journalists on the sidelines of the 27th Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja, on Tuesday. 

The Federal Government plans to begin deduction from the federation account for payment of $418 million private consultants who took part in the Paris Club Refund. 

This move is projected to affect the recurrent expenditure of at least 33 states and that may affect the payment of salaries of workers. 

For this reason, Fayemi said the governors are not in support of the decision. 

According to him, a situation where the Federal Government makes arbitrary deductions without the input of state governors is wrong. 

He said governors had agreed not to collect any allocation from the Federation Allocation Account (FAAC) until the issues are resolved. 

We are dealing with the issue. We would find a resolution to it. As far as states are concerned, they do not accept that funds belonging to federation account could just be arbitrarily deducted without the input of the states, and that’s why we are insisting that until this is clarified, we would rather leave the money in the pool until we all agree on the direction,” Governor Fayemi said.