For the second time in less than 90 days, alleged discrepancies in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s (NNPC’s) revenue report stalled the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting yesterday in Abuja.

Following the deadlock at the meeting, the state commissioners of Finance left Abuja without any decision on the revenue receipts submitted by NNPC, making good their threat not to accept revenue report by the corporation (NNPC) that did not reflect actual collections by the state-owned oil entity.

However, a source in the know of what transpired at the meeting hinted that the finance commissioners expressed their displeasure over what they claimed as under-declaration by the corporation.

Although the Chairman, Forum of Finance Commissioners, Mr. Mahmoud Yunusa, did not respond to media enquiries on what caused the deadlock, he, however, confirmed  all the commissioners were returning to their states to confer with their governors over matters that arose at the meeting.

However, the Director of Press at the Ministry of Finance, Mr. Hassan Dodo, said that the meeting would reconvene before the end of the week to ensure that appropriate decisions are taking on pending issues in the agenda of the meeting.

It would be recalled that over the past few years but more particularly in recent months, failure of the NNPC to provide factual figures on its revenue accruals and remittance had been a major challenge the FAAC had been contending with.

For instance, even before the present administration took over the reins of government, the corporation had, a few years back, under-remitted its revenue collections to the tune of several billions after which it was agreed at the FAAC meeting that it should be paying the shortfall monthly to offset the outstanding balance.

It took the corporation several months, even when it was paying over N7 billion every month into the Federation Account, to defray the under-remitted revenue.