Bayelsa received N90bn from excess crude accounts, says official

Bayelsa State government on Wednesday confirmed it got N90 billion from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) from thF federal Government as of October 2022.

ECA is a fund that warehouses oil revenue in excess of the budget benchmark of crude oil prices for redistribution to states on quarterly basis.

The Technical Adviser to the Governor on Treasury and Accounts, Timipre Seipulo, announced the figure at the monthly breakdown of income and expenditure for September and October 2022 in Yenagoa.

Mr Seipulo said the money was paid quarterly from the Federation Account and not monthly as speculated in some quarters.

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On the monthly revenue profile, the governor’s aide announced a N20.24 billion net receipt for September 2022, which accrued to the state government from the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), while total FAAC deductions stood at N1.59 billion.

Mr Seipulou also announced a N27.56 billion net receipt for October 2022 and N1.6 billion as total FAAC deductions.

“As of now, the net received from the fund so far is N90 billion up to October.

“And, if you look at the major projects we have also done, we have done quite some major projects, which we are utilising the funds and the major ones. For instance, the Yenagoa-Oporoma road, which the state has spent over N12 billion on.

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“We have the Igbogene-AIT road, which we have spent over N19 billion payment on, not the contract amount because the contract amount are far more than this.

“But we have actually disbursed over N100 billion to the contractors.” Mr Seipulo said.

Mr Seipulo also said the government garnered N2.65 billion as Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) for September 2022.

He said the government equally raked in N1.19 billion IGR for August 2022.

He noted that before now, the state’s monthly IGR had always been a little over N1 billion.

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Explaining the reason for the increase in the IGR, Mr Seipulou said: “Our IGR for September 2022 was N2.651 billion. You see, that is far beyond what we usually have.

“The increase arose because there was N1.1 billion IGR receipt, and also there was about N1.5 billion that was got from federal agencies, and that money was the portion that was due to Bayelsa State.

“So those two amounts accounted for the N2.651 billion IGR fund for that month (of September).” (NAN)