TheCable

The federation accounts allocation committee (FAAC) has resolved the NNPC revenue crisis that prevented it from disbursing allocations to the three tiers of government on Tuesday.

A disagreement had occurred due to the revenue remitted into the federation account by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

Ahmed Idris, accountant-general of the federation, had said: “The committee is of the opinion that until and unless these figures are reconciled, corrected, verified and factual; we cannot distribute the revenue as the case is.”

Kemi Adeosun, minister of finance, waded in and reconvened the meeting for Wednesday morning.

At the rescheduled meeting, the three tiers of government shared N647.39 billion for March.

Of this amount, the federal government received N270.8 billion, states got N173.75 billion and the 774 local government councils were allocated N130.9 billion.

Oil producing states received N57.35 billion based on the 13 percent derivation principle and N14.55 billion was returned to revenue generating agencies as the cost of revenue collection.

Adeosun said in accordance with the revenue sharing formula, the 36 states governments received N130.82 billion, while the local government councils received an allocation of N100.86 billion.

In addition, she announced that N57.35 billion representing 13 percent of the mineral revenue generated in the month of February, was also shared among the oil-producing states.

To this end, Adeosun said the nation generated N444.29 billion as mineral revenue and N112.99 billion as non-mineral revenue in February.

On discrepancies in figures submitted by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), she said she would be meeting with the group managing director to resolve the issues.

She pledged to ensure that the federation was not short-changed by any of its revenue generating agencies.

Mahmoud Yunusa, chairman, commissioners of finance Forum, said the state governments agreed to collect the available funds so that Nigerians would not have a bleak Easter.

“After the FAAC meeting was suspended yesterday, another meeting was called in the night, where we met, discussed and agreed that the outstanding balance with NNPC would be followed to its logical conclusion,” he said.

“However, Easter is approaching and a lot of people will be relying on their salaries for this purpose. I am sure that many people will be travelling and attending weddings.

“So we don’t want to disrupt Nigerians from enjoying themselves this holiday.

“To this end, we looked at the figure made available for sharing and it was more than the money made available last month by more than N11 billion. So give or take, we are not losing.”

Yunusa said the states had agreed to accept the figures as presented by the NNPC temporarily to pay salaries and then later engage NNPC for further discussions and reconciliation.

He said the states plan to meet with the accountants of the NNPC to begin the process of reconciliation within the next 48 hours.