Governors of the 36 states of the federation have said the announcement making the rounds that a disbursement of N243.8bn to states in the month of August had been made, came to their attention as a surprise.
The governors under the auspices of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum stated categorically that nothing could be farther from the truth as this disbursement did not happen and could not have happened as there are no further possibilities that they can happen now or in the future.
In a statement, the spokesman of the NGF, Abdulrazaque Bello Barkindo, said the so-called disbursement was therefore a “big lie and a figment of the imagination of its author”.
According to him, the lie is further accentuated by the fact that the announcer had remained anonymous and to all intents and purposes, faceless.
“If it were true and the announcer is sure of his facts, he would have owned the announcement in case anyone wanted to verify the information. But alas!
“The faceless announcer of the fake disbursement is apparently completely oblivious of or even clueless about how the Paris Club refunds came about.
“This ignorance is either a sincere lack of knowledge of the process or a deliberate effort to cause confusion in the land.
“The Paris Club is not a reserve from where the federal government can dip its hands and share monies to states. It was a cumulative over-payment of debts by states which was being refunded.
“The NGF therefore wishes to call on the announcer to desist from spreading malicious, mischievous and false information to the Nigerian public, especially where it involves money, as such could undermine the nation’s stability, especially at this inauspicious time when our finances are lean and security temperament is fragile.
“There are myriads of ways to encourage the population to call their leadership to account but stoking the embers of discord by dishing out false information as funds that have been disbursed to states is doing the states, the governors, and the citizens, as a whole, a disservice or even a calamity that no responsible citizen invites on his people,” he added.