Economic Meltdown: How Jonathan Saved, While Oshiomhole, Amaechi, Others Squandered States’ Share Of Sovereign Wealth Fund

Jonathan

Amaechi

Oshiomhole

A few days ago the ‘Buharideens’ in the media were celebrating. Their celebration showed from the manipulation of the views of the former minister of finance and coordinating minister of the economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala allegedly claiming that former President Goodluck Jonathan lacked the political will to save for the rainy days.

The former minister has since clarified  that it was the former state governors that lacked the political will to save, and not Jonathan. She revealed that Jonathan was willing to save and indeed saved, but the governors insisted on sharing the fund from excess crude account that is managed through the Sovereign Wealth Fund. Instead of blaming Jonathan we should blame the former governors who took the matter to the Supreme Court and forced the sharing of the states’ share of the excess crude account with the Sovereign Wealth Fund. Some of the former governors who instigated the sharing of the fund are today in the ‘progressive’ government and claiming innocence, but they cannot run away from judgement of history.

Now questions have been asked that even if the states’ shares were given to them, was Jonathan able to save the federal government’s share. Those who ask this mischievous question even without condemning the former governors want to give the impression that Jonathan also squandered federal government’s share of the Sovereign Wealth Fund.

Jonathan saved a substantial amount of the excess crude account that accrued to the federal government with the Sovereign Wealth Fund. Recently, the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) operators of the country’s $1.5 billion Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) declared a N15.77 billion turnover for its 2014 operating year.
The result was a huge improvement on the 2013 business year result of N525 million turnover, just as the Fund for the first time also netted a profit of over N5.17 billion as operation cost and taxes alone gulped the sum of N1.9 billion.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the fund, Mr. Uche Orji revealed these figures in Abuja, recently while shedding light on the status of the fund, which fully came into operation in 2013.
He revealed that so far, the Fund has partnered with DFID, IFC, GE, Islamic Development Bank, Proparco and other private equity funds for co-investment opportunities and has equally within the period been admitted as a full member of the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds (IFSWF) where it is currently ranked in global joint-second category for transparency in 2014/15 by the U.S.-based Sovereign Wealth Fund. The question to ask Governor Adams Oshiomhole, and former governor of Rivers State, and now minister of Transportation, Mr Rotimi Amaechi among other former governors what happened to their states’ share of the sovereign wealth fund?
It is obvious that if the former state governors had agreed with Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Jonathan, Nigeria as a nation would have saved more and be in a better position to withstand the downturn in the price of crude oil.

Aside maintaining the Sovereign Wealth Fund even without the support of the former governors, Jonathan left for the President Muhammadu Buhari administration a foreign reserve of $29.6billion as at May 28, 2015.  Read: “Nigeria’s Foreign Reserves Now $29.6bn, Says CBN.”

http://thestreetjournal.org/2015/05/nigerias-foreign-reserves-now-29-6bn-says-cbn/
This was despite the claim by the incumbent administration that it met empty treasury. There is a lot of misinformation out there and there is the need to counter them especially as the information you read now could become somebody’s research material 50 years from today. With doctored information, researchers could reach flawed conclusions on the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan.