FROM the governors of Nigeria’s 36 states came Monday’s request that the nation’s Supreme Court should bar the federal government from going ahead with a planned withdrawal of $2 billion from Excess Crude Account until case regarding the status of the account is resolved.
Counsel to the governors, Mr. Adegboyega Awomolo, SAN, made the case for a stay of action on the funds, pointing out that Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala recently revealed that the government intends pulling about $2 billion from the funds, even as it has been drastically depleted from about $20 billion in 2008 to a current balance of $3.1 billion.
Other requests made by the governors included that a specific date be said aside for the commencement of the hearing of the case, saying that previous effort of settling the issue out of court has so far failed.
Awomolo also told the Supreme Court that the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Bello Adoke, SAN, refused to set aside time for any deliberation. The aggrieved state governors,who believed the attitude of the Attorney-General of the Federation, AGF, was deliberate, requested the Supreme Court to give them a hearing date to enable the case to be heard on its merit.
But the federal government is insisting in its request for more time to settle the matter out of court. Attorney-General Adoke was rep-resented in court yesterday by a member of the inner bar, Mr. Austin Alege, SAN. He agreed that the apex court could proceed to hear the matter if the plaintiffs could no longer exercise patience for the settlement deal. He said that meetings upon meetings have been held between the state governors and the federal government, and that almost all the issues had been resolved.
He added that the Supreme Court has no subject-matter jurisdiction to entertain the case as crafted because the Federation Account from which mon-es were allegedly deducted or diverted belonged to the three tiers of government and that the appropriate forum to air their grievances should be a Federal High Court and not the Supreme Court. Alege further stated that, any money taken from excess crude account is shared amongst the three tiers of government.“Governors should make an undertaking not to demand for withdrawal from the excess crude account to share any time there is shortfall in the allocation before the next adjourned date of September 25,” Alege said.
The implication is that if the Supreme Court should rule, after hearing out par-ties on the preliminary objection by the Federal Government, that it has no original jurisdiction to en-tertain the case, the matter would have to start de novo before a Federal High Court and the verdict of the trial court is appellable to the Supreme Court.
This implies that the final ruling of the Supreme Court on the constitutional matter may not come until years after the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan. Both parties have however agreed to join issues on the preliminary objection raised by the Federal Government challenging the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court which was scheduled to get reports yesterday from the two parties on how far they had gone on the out of court settlement has also fixed September 25 for hearing in the case.The apex Court had on March 26 adjourned for re-port of settlement yester-day in a suit between the 36 states and the Federal Government on the ECA.
The states are challenging the legality of the ECA and the decision of the Fed-eral Government to trans-fer $1 billion from the ac-count to the SWF. Counsel for the 36 gover-nors, Awomolo, had told the apex court that they have done all that is required to achieve an amicable settle-ment, but the AGF had since the last adjourned date failed to create time to meet with them.“We are constrained that this court needs to assist us to hear our matter in the interest of justice,” Awomolo said.
The seven-man panel led by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Dahiru Musdapher slated September 25 to hear all the applications and the substantive suit. He directed all parties to file all necessary applications and responses before the adjourned date.
The governors had gone to court to, among others, seek for an order compel-ling the Government of the Federation to pay into the Federation Account the sum of N5.51 trillion being the balance of the sum which accrued to the Government of the Federation during the period 2004 and 2007 from the proceeds of crude oil sales, petroleum profits tax and oil royalties which the Government of the Federation classified as “excess crude proceeds” and “excess PPT and Royalties” and paid into an account which was styled “Excess Crude Account”. They also asked the court to order the Federal Government to transfer to the Federation Account, all sums standing to the credit of the “Excess Crude Account”.
The governors went to court to challenge the ac-tion, conduct and activi-ties of the Federal Govern-ment with respect to the management and opera-tion of the Federation Ac-count.The parties in this suit have, severally, exploited avenues of out of court settlement and indeed agreed on a settlement but the settlement so reached could not be implemented and was also not entered as the judgement of the court.
Consequently, the case was set down for trial and parties were directed to ex-change briefs.