Alarmed by the widespread fraud and looting of the Bayelsa State government treasury in the past four years, Governor Henry Seriake Dickson may be considering the option of inviting the Nigeria’s anti-graft agency to recover the stolen fund.
Already, the governor, aided by his finance commissioner-designate are painstakingly scrutinizing the 13-page report of the 11-member Finance Management Committee, in readiness for proper hand-over to officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and other related matters.
The committee, headed by a former bank manager and managing director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Timi Alaibe, submitted its report to Dickson last week. Its eight-point term of reference was to “conduct a diagnostic review of the finances of Bayelsa State from May 2007 to February 14, 2012.”
In the detail report, now in the exclusive possession of LEADERSHIP SUNDAY, the state government under the administration of former Governor Timipre Sylva received total net revenue of N660, 458, 639, 370 within the past four years.
Of the amount, the statutory allocation for the period came up to N423,499,308,538 while from other unidentified sources, the state government earned N242,378,710,802 and N15,685,621,696 came from the millennium development goals (MDGs) grants.
Similarly, the government got N21, 542,971,607 from Value Added Tax (VAT) while internally generated revenue accounted for N18, 360,055,148 just as deductions for the four years stands at N54, 008,028,694.