The Minister of Finance,Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has accused the Rivers state governor, Chibuike Amaechi, of being economical with the truth about the status of the Excess Crude Account, ECA, and the situation with the loan the state government sought from the African Development Bank, ADB.

Reacting to claims made by Governor Amaechi last Saturday, during the executive retreat by the Nigerian Governor's Forum, in Sokoto State, that he did not understand what happened to the savings in the ECA, which had a balance of about $9billion (N1.43 trillion) in January before being depleted to less than $4 billion (N635 billion) by November – an allusion that about $5 billion (N794 billion) may have been mismanaged.

The NGF Chairman had also accused Ms. Okonjo-Iweala of politicising her official decisions. He cited the application by the Rivers State Government for approval of the bid to secure a $200 million loan facility from the ADB for the execution of some water projects, which, he said, was turned down by the Minister, because of his political feud with President Goodluck Jonathan.

However, the Minister, in her response expressed shock at the governor’s claims adding that Rivers State being the second biggest beneficiary of the several withdrawals from the ECA to augment the shortfalls in the annual budget estimates, Mr. Amaechi could not deny knowledge of the status of the account.

She explained that Rivers State has received N56.2 billion from the Excess Crude Account between January and September 2013 adding that this amount included N43 billion for shortfalls, plus N12 billion released for SURE-P.

The minister added that Rivers State along with other states, earlier in November, also benefitted from the sharing of $1 billion (N158.9 billion) withdrawal from the ECA to augment the statutory revenue allocations to the three tiers of government for October.

While describing the claim that $5 billion was missing from the ECA as ”absolutely shocking and false”, the minister said Mr. Amaechi was closely involved and actively participated in making requests to the presidency for the account to be shared for the purpose of augmenting the regular allocations from the Federation Account whenever there was a shortfall.

She added that it was curious that the governor did not to know the whereabouts of the N56.2 billion, which Rivers State received from the ECA this year.

Part of the fund, the minister said, also went for the SURE-P payments and the balance for subsidy payments to petroleum products marketers.

Ms. Okonjo-Iweala dismissed the claim that she refused to sign the document giving approval for the ADB loan for a water project in Port Harcourt, describing the claim as wrong and misleading.

She explained that although the loan in question had since been appraised by the Federal Ministry of Finance, it was yet to be negotiated by all the parties involved pointing out that before she could sign the document giving the final approval, the loan application had to go through the negotiation processes, considered and cleared by both the Board of ADB and the Executive Council of the Federation, FEC.