FAAC suspends April distribution over NNPC failure to remit funds
* State governors meets top officials of NNPC
Strong indications have emerged about the possibility of delay in the April salary of civil servants nationwide as the Federation Account Allocation Committee ( FAAC) session abruptly adjourned on Wednesday over the failure of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to remit accurate returns to the federation account.
Wednesday’s adjournment was the second time in a sequence after a similar one in March during Easter festivity.
The Chairman of Finance Commissioners Forum and Adamawa State Commissioner for Finance, Mr. Mahmoud Saleh Yunusa, confirmed the FAAC postponement on Wednesday to journalists during an interview at the Federal Ministry of Finance in Abuja.
Mahmoud described the postponement as an unfortunate development that prompted state governors intervention.
He added that the state governors were holding a ” high level meeting with top officials of NNPC on Wednesday in Abuja “.
“We have some challenges, the figures we have gotten is far less than what we expected to be remitted by NNPC. As it’s now, there is a meeting between the governors and the top management of NNPC at the Presidential Villa. I believe this is a very high level deliberation and something good will come out of it” .
He said that NNPC is duty bound to carry FAAC stakeholders along in its business, adding that any short of transparency in its account rendition would elicit questions.
Yunusa said, “There are processes okay. Before now , you don’t hear such news; whatever issue you get you deliberate on it, but because this government is a government of change, some level of transparency is expected .
“When you pick your figures and you submit your figures the person that suppose to look at it and deliberate on it will ask questions if need be”.
Asked whether if what the NNPC had done does not amount to deliberate shortchanging of federation account, Yunusa said it would be too hasty to take such position.
He said, “I don’t want to use the word insincerity. What happened could be an error. If one party is wrong, the other party is right ; if you add it together at the end of the day you make progress. Last FAAC was postponed twice and at the end of the day we made progress. That was during Easter break, in the spirit of Easter, we held a meeting.
Even though we are looking at the plight of the workers that were supposed to receive their salary as at when due; based on the submission we have now, some states cannot pay salary now.
“What we are doing now is , we have to table a lot of these , that is why the matter is in the highest level and are being discussed now”,
Last month, FAAC was adjourned for a day to enable proper reconciliation of NNPC’s account after it was discovered that what the nation’s oil firm paid into federation account was N10O billion less.
