FAAC: FG, states again, fail to share May revenue

The monthly Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting has again ended in a stalemate as Federal and state governments reject the revenue figures submitted by NNPC for May. One of the finance commissioners, who did not want to be named told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the committee was still not satisfied with the revenue figures presented before the committee by the NNPC The commissioner said that the committee agreed to postpone the meeting to Thursday, to give NNPC a chance to make adjustments. This is the second time the committee has failed to reach an agreement over revenue generated in the month of May. It would be recalled that a meeting was convened on June 27, which was inconclusive. According to the Chairman, Forum of Finance Commissioners, Mr Mahmoud Yunusa, it was due to discrepancies in revenue remittances by the NNPC. On June 28, the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, confirmed that FAAC ended in a deadlock because the figures proposed by the NNPC were unacceptable. “For the purpose of this briefing, we operate NNPC as a business. “We have invested public capital in that business and we have expectations of return and when that return falls lower than our expectations, then the owners of the business, which in this case is the Federal Government and states need to act. “So, that was what caused the deadlock and we really felt the figures that the NNPC proposed for FAAC were unacceptable. “We felt that some of the costs could not be justified and so we have decided that rather than approve the accounts, we will go back and do further work.’’]]>