NNPC To Pay N450bn Into Federation Account

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has agreed to offset the N450 billion owed the Federation Account.

The minister of state for finance, Dr. Yerima Ngama, made this known at the end of the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting yesterday in Abuja.

The NNPC debt had been a subject of controversy for the last three years and was said to be the issue that stalled the FAAC meeting earlier scheduled to hold last week Friday.

But the minister stated that the NNPC debt has never been an issue, saying that it has been resolved.

He said the said amount would be paid by NNPC in statutory installment starting from this month, noting that it was never the cause of postponing the meeting last week.

“We had an agreement that whenever the NNPC generates more revenue, they can fast-track and clear the whole amount. It’s such a huge amount that nobody will want to cough it out like that,” he said.

At the FAAC monthly meeting chaired by Ngama and attended by the commissioners of finance from the 36 states of the federation, the sum of N607.023billion was shared among the three tiers of government.

Others in attendance are the accountant-general of the federation, Mr. Jonah Otunla, representatives of the Federal Inland Revenue Services, Central Bank of Nigeria, the Nigeria Customs and the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission.

Ngama said the amount represented a decrease of N9.222bn over the N616.245bn received in the month of July.

Of the amount, the federal government is expected to get N319.77bn, representing 52.68 per cent; the 36 states would share N105.06bn, indicating 24.72 per cent; while the 774 local governments would share N125.04bn or 20.6 per cent.

The balance of N78.91bn would go the oil-producing states based on the 13 per cent principle of derivation.
No amount was remitted into the excess crude account.

“The amount distributed was N607.023bn out of the total budget of N615.757bn. For the month of August, there was no augmentation,” he said.