Workers at the three tiers of government are to receive their salaries for this month before the Easter break as the Federal, State and Local Governments shared the sum of N647.39 billion from the Federation Account for February.
But for the intervention of the Finance Minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, it would have been a bleak Easter for the workers as states had on Tuesday bluntly refused to share the amount made available to FAAC for distribution as they pointedly accused the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) of withholding monies from the federation account.
Adeosun, who spoke to journalists at the end of the Committee’s meeting, said the N647.39 billion distributed to the three tiers of government was N11.836 billion higher than the N635.554 billion shared in the previous month.
Statutory revenue accounted for N557.943 billion of the total revenue distributed yesterday while Value Added Tax (VAT) accounted for the balance of N89.447 billion.
On the States’ dispute with the revenue paid by NNPC into the Federation Account, the Minister said the FAAC would reconcile the revenue figures with the top management of the Corporation led by the Group Managing Director, Mr. Maikanti Baru.
“The NNPC is a major channel of our mineral revenue. Some issues have been raised by the States on the revenue paid into the Federation Account by NNPC.
“These are being looked into and within the next 48 hours, we will be a joint meeting with the NNPC Group Managing Director to address the concerns of the States. The reconciliation of the revenue figures is part of a healthy process to ensure transparency and accountability,” Adeosun said.
In his response, the Chairman of Commissioners of finance forum, Mallam Mahmoud Yunusa said the states’ oil firm- NNPC deliberately sidelined other stakeholders in a business that belongs to all.
“We have agreed last night to hold the meeting as it were, move on to our respective states and pay the salary so that every body will celebrate the Easter. Be that as it may, the account as submitted by NNPC is still not acceptable to us. We will sit down with NNPC to ensure all the grew areas are trashed out. What we expected from NNPC is less than what was submitted . We the commissioners of state are not happy the way NNPC is running this business. We are major shareholders in this business but yet we are not happy with the way NNPC is handling it”.
