Kwara State governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, on Tuesday, said the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), if elected, would fight the people stealing Nigeria’s oil and arrest the worsening state of the nation’s economy.

Ahmed decried the worsening state of the economy and the attendant socio-economic woes confronting the citizens.

The governor said it was sad that oil theft had been on the increase under the President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.

He spoke during the Joint Kwara Labour Congress governorship debate/interactive session with political parties and their candidates in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital.

Ahmed said that many states and local government councils in the country had been finding it difficult to meet up with their recurrent expenditure, including payment of their workers’ salaries.

He said, “We know that Nigeria, as it were, our allocations come from the sales of crude oil. Nigeria is expected to sell 2.5million barrels of crude oil per day.

“These monies are expected to accrue at the end of every month into the federation account. When we do a budget benchmark of $80 per barrel and when crude oil is sold for $100 per barrel, it means that we have excess of $20 per barrel, which we should be keeping in the Excess Crude Account.

“But instead of 2.5million barrels per day, what we hear is that Nigeria sells barely about 1.5million barrel per day. We hear that the other portion is being stolen. The implication of this is that the amount of money that is accruable to the Federation Account is short. Once it is short, it means that the money that is also distributable to the three tiers of government is also short.

“When I came in 2011, the monthly allocation to Kwara State was about N3.1bn on monthly basis. By the end of 2012, it has dropped to N2.9bn. Local government councils were collecting about N2.8bn monthly.

“But suddenly the theft of crude oil increased. Our allocation began to drop from N3.1bn to N2.8bn; N2.6bn to N2.1bn and our monthly commitment is still at about N2.8bn. Local governments had been having a drop from N2.8bn to N1.7bn.”

He however said that Kwara had been able to keep afloat as a result of his government’s financial ingenuity.

Ahmed therefore urged the electorate to vote for Buhari, saying he would “frontally confront and defeat bunkerers and other oil thieves.”

He urged registered voters who had not collected their permanent voter cards to collect them so that they could vote for the APC candidates.

FEBRUARY 18, 2015 BY SUCCESS NWOGU