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Tag: FAAC meeting

FAAC meeting inconclusive again

THE much-awaited June 2018 Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) Meeting scheduled for yesterday ended inconclusive. It was rescheduled for tomorrow.

Yesterday’s meeting, which lasted for about one and a half hours, was inconclusive because other members of the FAAC could not reach an agreement with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on the amount to be shared for last month.

An hour into the meeting, the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF), Mr. Ahmed Idris, staged a walkout with a retinue of his staff.

The accountant-general’s exit was an indication that all was not well with the meeting.

Shortly thereafter, other members of the FAAC started streaming out of the auditorium of the federal ministry of finance venue of the meeting.

A source at the meeting told The Nation that the meeting was inconclusive because they could not reach an agreement with the NNPC “on how much to share and what it is bringing to the table.”

Tomorrow’s FAAC meeting, the source said “will be explosive as the state governors have vowed not to shift grounds until the NNPC gives a true account of what is due to the federation account.”

No official came to brief the press after the meeting but words that filtered out of the meeting was that the next meeting has been fixed for tomorrow.

Should tomorrow’s meeting end in a deadlock again, civil servants may wait for another month without salaries because of the refusal of the NNPC to meet the demands of other FAAC members to fully disclose and remit what was accrued for sharing.

The last successful FAAC meeting was held in April to share the allocation for May.

By implication, the May accruals that ought to have been shared for June remained controversial and contentious, thus delaying workers’ monthly entitlements.

Last week, the Chairman of Finance Commissioners’ Forum, Mahmood Yunusa, accused the NNPC of short-paying the FAAC by N20 billion on royalties and Petroleum Profit Tax (PPT) not to mention proceeds from the May 2018 sale of Crude oil by the NNPC.

The state governments, he said, have resolved to stand “solidly behind the Minister of Finance”, Kemi Adeosun to resolve the matter once and for all and get the NNPC to fully disclose and remit true and accurate proceeds to the federation account.

July 11, 2018
FAAC: FG, States, LGs Share N647.39bn – Adeosun

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.

The money was the revenue collection for the month of February 2018 which was approved at the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting convened and chaired by the minister of finance Wednesday.

The unusual FAAC meeting was attended by, a representative of the Permanent Secretary and Director of Home Finance in the Federal Ministry of Finance, Mrs. Olubunmi Siyanbola; Accountant General of the Federation, Mr. Ahmed Idris; Chairman of Finance Commissioners’ Forum and Adamawa State Commissioner for Finance, Mr. Mahmoud Yunusa; States’ Commissioners of Finance and Accountant-Generals, and representatives of revenue generating agencies.

Adeosun, who spoke to journalists at the end of the Committee’s emergency meeting, said she personally engaged states’ governors in several meetings the previous night (Tuesday) to find a way around the stalemate.

She then revealed that the sum of 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 for the month of February while Value Added Tax (VAT) accounted for the balance of N89.447 billion.

The total revenue distribution in the previous month was made up of statutory revenue of N538.908 billion and Value Added Tax of N96.646 billion.

On the States’ dispute with the revenue paid by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (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 hold 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.

The Chairman of Finance Commissioners’ Forum, Mahmoud Yenusa, explained that the reconvening of the meeting had become necessary to enable States pay workers their salaries before the Easter break.

“The account submitted by the NNPC is not acceptable to the States but we are willing to jointly reconcile the revenue figure with the leadership of NNPC.

“We agreed last night to reconvene the meeting for the benefits of Nigerian workers at all tiers of government, to enable them receive their salaries,” the Adamawa State Commissioner of Finance said.

Sounding a note of warning, Mahmoud Yunusa stated that the states “won’t take this anymore. NNPC will have to sit up and do its job. We are not taking this anymore. We would not come here, spend days without holding the meeting. So in the spirit of Easter, we would take this account, go home with it; pay salary and come back to meet NNPC to pay us our balance. We have to find out wherever the error is”, he said.

Immediately after the meeting, the Accountant General of Federation signed the mandates for the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to pay the approved revenue allocation into the accounts of the Federal, State and Local Governments.

Giving further breakdown of the revenue distribution, the Finance Minister said the Federal Government received N257.927 billion of the net statutory revenue as against the N249.366 billion received in the previous month, while the State and Local Governments’ share of the statutory revenue was N130.824 billion and N100.86 billion, respectively.

The States and Local Governments had last month got N126.482 billion and N97.512 billion, respectively.

The 13% derivation accounted for the balance of the statutory revenue of N57.356 billion.

The 36 States received Value Added Tax of N42.935 billion compared with N46.39 billion received in the previous month, while the Federal and Local Governments received VAT of N12.88 billion and N30.054 billion, respectively.

Both Federal and Local Governments had received N13.917 billion and N32.473 billion, respectively, from VAT in February 2018.

Read Also: FAAC: Fed Govt, states, councils share N655b in December

March 28, 2018
FAAC meeting stalled over N100b revenue shortfall

•Minister reschedues meeting for today

The Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting ended in a deadlock yesterday.

It was called off over discrepancies in the revenue remitted by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

The committee could not approve the allocations to the tiers of government owing to the N100 billion discrepancies in revenue figures presented to the committee by the oil giant.

Accountant-General of the Federation Ahmed Idris said the committee postponed the FAAC meeting after it was discovered that the amount remitted by the NNPC into the federation account was understated.

But Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun last night rescheduled the meeting for today.

Yesterday’s FAAC meeting was supposed to approve the disbursements for February allocation to the federal, states and local governments. The AGF said “It is on that note that we observed some issues in the figures given by one of the major revenue generating agencies namely the NNPC, and the committee is of the opinion that until and unless these figures are reconciled, corrected, verified and factual, we cannot distribute the revenue as the case is.”

Ahmed Idris assured Nigerians “that we are sensitive with the issues but again, we have to follow the constitution and the necessary laws for distribution of revenue and it is on this note that I inform you that the meeting has not been concluded. We have to explain this to Nigerians bearing in mind that as civil servants, workers in the federal, states and local governments deserve to have their salaries and all other commitments of government.”

He added: “we will look at the revenue figures as submitted by the NNPC and reconcile such figures and upon conclusion of the reconciliation of that figure, we will share the revenue accordingly”

Chairman, Forum of FAAC Commissioners Mahmoud Yunusa (Adamawa State) said “the NNPC must remit the revenue.”

He said: “We started this meeting last week and the 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 us to see that the amount was less than N100 billion. So we decided that we will not collect the figures presented, that we will contest it.”

Yunusa added: “We are contesting the figures because pipeline vandalism had reduced while crude oil prices have continued to go up. So we are wondering why the nation cannot raise enough money through that sector to share to states so that everyone can pay workers, contractors and so on.”

March 28, 2018
States walk out of FAAC meeting

States and local governments yesterday aborted the May 2013 Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting. They walked out on Minister of State for Finance Dr Yerima Lawal Ngama and left Abuja without any cash.

The meeting is the forum where monthly allocation to the tiers of government is shared.

Commissioners of Finance Forum Chair Timothy Odaah (Ebonyi State) said there would no longer be FAAC meetings “until all the conditions are met by the Federal Government”.

He said commissioners were going back empty handed.

By implication, states that depend entirely on the monthly allocation from the FAAC meeting may not be able to meet basic obligations, like paying workers’ salaries and contractors.

Odaah gave the reasons for quitting the meeting to include: “The non-implementation of the decisions and resolutions taken in most FAAC meeting plenary sessions, especially the May 2013 resolutions which still remains inconclusive based on the fact that the arrears of February have not been paid.”

He also complained about the failure of the committee to pay “augmentation of last month (April Allocation) passed with a resolution.”

He said this augmentation has not been paid “and there is no clue as to why”.

Odaah lamented that “every month, returns from the states accountant generals appear to be shabbier than the previous one”.

He said states “have taken a lot of disappointment from the administration of FAAC which by intents and purposes has become templates of ineptitude”.

The states and local governments, he added, “have been bearing with the situation”. “Workers and contractors have to be paid, the various programmes of the state governments and local governments that are embodied in their various manifestos to carry the federation of Nigeria along with other obligations have to be met”.

The commissioners of Finance said they had decided to take the matter up with the President “ so that he and the state governments have to meet on these decisions that we have been hiding for them to put heads together with every other well meaning persons in the federation so that this problem will be resolved once and for all”.

Odaah noted that no member of the forum was absent from the media briefing, an indication that “this is a unanimous decision and resolution by all of the commissioners of finance”.

There were indications that trouble was brewing after the technical session when commissioners, while waiting for the arrival of the minister of state for Finance, told Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF) Jonah Otunla, that they would not accept any delay of the plenary session, the meeting that endorses the decisions of the state Accountants-General at the technical session which also ratifies the amount to be shared for the month.

Shortly thereafter, Ngama came in for the plenary and about 50 minutes later, the commissioners of finance started trooping out of the auditorium of the Ministry of Finance venue of the planned FAAC meeting and headed for Sheraton Hotel to address the media.

The Nation reported on Wednesday that the Federal Government was constrained to pay the arrears because it had initially released $1 billion to the states on request.

The Federal Government argued that since the $1 billion was drawn from the Excess Crude Account (ECA) and financing the February arrears will also be drawn from the same ECA, paying the February arrears would drastically dwindle the reserves in the ECA.

However, the Federal Government has agreed to offset the February arrears in installments through augmentation to allow the ECA recover from the $1 billion withdrawn from the account.

The February arrears is almost $1 billion, the amount advanced to the states from the ECA as a privilege extended to the states.

June 14, 2013