Odahiekwu Ogunde , Yenagoa
Bayelsa State Government has said that it got N27bn and not N38bn approved by the Federal Government for federal projects executed by the state from 2005 till date.
The Senate had on November 24, 2020 approved promissory notes and bond issuances worth N148.1bn as refunds to some states for executing federal projects.
The beneficiaries are Bayelsa, Rivers, Cross River, Osun and Ondo states.
A breakdown of the money shows that Bayelsa got N38.4bn, Cross River N18.4bn, Ondo N7.8bn, Osun N4.5bn and Rivers N78.9bn.
Promissory notes and bonds are debt instruments which one party promises in writing to pay a determinate sum of money to the other, either at a fixed or determinable future time, under specific terms and redeemable before maturity at a discount.
Bayelsa State Governor, Douye Diri, gave the clarification on Sunday amid speculations that the state government was in receipt of the N38bn in cash while giving financial update for November and December 2020.
Represented by his Technical Adviser on Treasury and Accounts, Timipre Seipulo, explained that the debt instrument issued by the Federal Government had a tenor of between four and five years maturity.
He said that the refund was structured in such a way that benefiting states would have to wait for between four and five years before they could access the full amount of the refunds.
He explained that for states that wanted their funds, it had to be discounted and as such the N27bn announced by the government is the discounted amount from the N38bn.
Although the government did not disclose the details of the spread of the instruments in promissory notes and bonds, the discount amounted to 71 per cent of the N38.4bn value.
It, therefore, implies that the state forfeited 29 per cent of the funds amounting to N11.4 bn.
Before the clarification, speculation was rife that the state government collected over N38bn refund from the Federal Government but announced it received N27bn, a development that set tongues wagging as to the whereabouts of the remaining over N11bn.