Plateau State Government has described as untrue the insinuation that the crisis rocking the Nigeria Governors' Forum is putting the finances of state governments under stress.
The Punch investigation had indicated that since the crisis started, there had been disagreement on how to take a common stand on the Federation Account dispute and how to share money from the Excess Crude Account.
A pointer to this was when it was reported that state finance commissioners walked out on the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, during last Thursday's FAAC meeting in Abuja. This might have prompted Monday's (today) meeting called by Governor Jonah Jang, who is leading a faction of NGF.
However, the Secretary to State Government of Plateau, Prof. Shedrack Best, told our correspondent in an interview in Jos on Sunday that nothing could be further from the truth.
He said since NGF did not disburse funds, the insinuation that the crisis was affecting the financial position of states could not be sustained.
He explained that the governors' meeting was to sort out some inconsistencies by the finance ministry.
Instead, Best said the problem associated with sharing of funds from the federation account had to do with what he described as insincerity of officials of the finance ministry in managing the country's finances.
Best added that the problem arose because the ministry had the attitude of treating state finance commissioners as if they were seeking favour.
The SSG said, "This is utter nonsense. You know that the NGF and Chairman of NGF do not disburse funds to states. The problem has to do with the repeatedly poor quality of service and lack of transparency with the Federation Account at the Fed Min of Finance."
The Punch