The Presidency has intervened in the week-long crisis in the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) over unresolved discrepancies in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s (NNPC’s) revenue report to the committee which stalled disbursement of funds to the tiers of government for June.
Some sources at the Presidency confirmed that the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, had directed the NNPC’s management to forward all relevant documents on the corporation’s monthly revenue to his office in order to resolve the revenue sharing logjam.
According to one of the sources, the Vice President’s intervention became necessary after efforts by the Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, who is the chairperson of the committee, to get the corporation agree with the demands of the states’ commissioners of finance over alleged N20 billion under-remittance by the state-owned oil corporation to the Federation Account did not yield any result.
The source said that Osinbajo, who is also chairman of the National Economic Council, would be looking into the N20 billion shortfalls in NNPC’s remittance more critically in order to amicably resolve the impasse, particularly as most states are waiting for the revenue distributions of the month to pay their workers’ salaries.
Apparently miffed by the discrepancies in the NNPC revenue report at the meeting, the minister had last week rebuked the corporation for presenting a revenue report that did not reflect what it should remit to the Federation Account.
The chairman of the Forum of Commissioners of Finance of FAAC, Mahmoud Yunusa, argued that the NNPC had not been transparent with the 36 states of the federation in the management of its operations, stressing that while the oil firm claimed on Wednesday to have remitted N147 billion into the Federation Account, what was actually received was N127 billion.
Following the stalemate in FAAC, the non-disbursement of funds will stall most states’ capacity to pay their workers’ June salaries
