Governors of the 36 state of the federation have withdrawn their support for the recently passed Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, declaring the legislation “unconstitutional”, and therefore urged President Goodluck Jonathan to suspend its implementation forthwith.
In a statement issued after a meeting late Sunday, the governors argued that the new law breached existing ones, hence could only be implemented after “all the issues are resolved.”
At a meeting at the Rivers State governor’s lodge in Abuja early in the week, the governors restated that position in a four-point communiqué. “Members resolved to call on the federal government to suspend the operation of the Sovereign Wealth Fund Act (SWF) until all the issues are resolved because it is unconstitutional,” the the statement signed Governor Rotimi Ameachi stated in part.
It would be recalled that this same set of state executives were against the creation of the SWF in the first instance as a replacement for the Excess Crude Account - a common pool that hitherto held oil revenues above budgeted benchmarks, which they usually share periodically.
One wonders if this latest outcry is not as a result of their inability to have easy access to excess cash from the treasury in the guise of Excess Crude Account. Time will indeed tell who is fooling who.
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