Ribadu to Northen Governors: Show what you have done with N8.3 Trillion in 11 years.

This is not the best of times for people in government as more citizens are calling more transparency and accountability to their spending of state funds. Just days after a former minister inquired of the Federal government to explain how they spent the $45bn left in the foreign reserves account and $22bn in the Excess Crude Account by the former President Olusegun Obasanjo administration, former boss of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, has asked the governors of the 19 Northern States to account for the N8.3 trillion that accrued to their states between 1999 and 2010 as there was nothing to show for the huge resources at the state and local government levels. Ribadu made this known at a two-day summit of Northern Development Focus Initiative (NDFI) and lamented that despite the fact that each of the 414 local governments in the north currently has budget in excess of that of the entire Northern Region under the late Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, successive administrations in the region have failed to meet the expectations of the people. He blamed the problem on corruption, saying: "We have got a problem with our country.” Ribadu said it is unfortunate that 90 per cent of the nation's resources are being stolen by public officials. He added: "When Major Nzeogwu made his speech to justify the takeover of power on January 15th, 1966, he mentioned that the military took over because the first republic politicians were collecting ten percent bribes...but nonetheless it is presupposed that at least they were using 90 percent of the resources to do the work. But the question we are asking now is 'What is happening now'? It is either the other way around: public officials taking away 90 percent and using 10 percent to work or even out rightly looting of the treasury. In fact, from recent reports, a lot of money is stolen from the source, that it does not even make its way to the treasuries of the many governments in the country today. As I was writing this paper I stumbled on a tweet that got me thinking that read as follows, "The revenue Nigeria received for the whole of last year (2012) from the sale of crude oil is more than the yearly aid, the entire sub Saharan Africa received. Where is the money, where is the improvement?" This was a question posed to us by the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron at the World Economic Forum in Davos,” he asked.