FAAC meeting deadlocked over discrepancies in NNPC revenue
The three tiers of government couldn’t share revenue for the month of February owing to discrepancies of about N37.76 billion in revenue presented by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
The Account ant General of Federation, Ahmed Idris, who represented the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun at the Federal Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting yesterday told reporters that the revenue sharing was suspended until figures were reconciled with the NNPC.
According to insider sources, the NNPC remitted N74.06 billion into the federation account, as oil revenue generated in the month of February, and which was to be shared at yesterday’s meeting.
Compared to the collection of N111.84 billion in January, 2018, the February collection of N74.06 billion was lower by N37. 76 billion or 33 per cent, a figure the FG and states rejected.
“The meeting was inconclusive because of some issues around reconciliation on the table. Obviously, you are aware that everything that has to do with the federation revenue is constitutional and therefore, we must verify our figures to the last kobo, failing which we will be committing illegality, unconstitutionality,” the minister said.
“It is on that note that we observed some issues by one of the major revenue generating agencies, the NNPC and the meeting was of the opinion that until and unless these figures are reconciled, corrected, verified and they are factual, we cannot distribute the revenue as we should,” he said.
The Chairman, Forum of FAAC Commissioners, Mr Mahmoud Yunusa said the forum rejected the amount presented by the NNPC because it was far lower than what was projected for the month.
“We started this meeting last week and NNPC did not submit their figures until yesterday (Monday), which we were not able to review until this morning. This morning when we were reviewing the figures as presented by the NNPC, it came as a great surprise to see that the amount was less than N100 billion” he said.