The Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) yesterday shared N647.39 billion to all the tiers of government from the total revenue that accrued to the Federation Account in February.

The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, who is also the Chairman of the committee told journalists at the end of the meeting that the total sum of shared to the Federal State and Local Governments was N11.836 billion higher than the N635.554 billion shared in the previous month.

During the month under review, the Federation Account indicated that statutory revenue accounted for N557.943 billion of the total revenue while Value Added Tax (VAT) accounted for the balance of N89.447 billion.

Giving a further breakdown of the revenue distributions, the Minister said that the Federal Government received N257.927 billion of the net statutory revenue allocation while the State and Local Governments’ share of the statutory revenue was N130.824 billion and N100.86 billion, respectively.

The 13% derivation accounted for the balance of the statutory revenue of N57.356 billion and was distributed to the oil producing states.

The 36 states received N42.935 billion as VAT distributions while the Federal and Local Governments got N12.88 billion and N30.054 billion respectively from the revenue source.

Commenting on states’ incessant disagreement with the revenue paid by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation into the Federation Account, the Minister confirmed that the FAAC would meet with the management of the corporation to reconcile the revenue figures.

She clarified:

“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.

Commenting on the decisions reached at the meeting, 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.

Yenusa said: “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,” he added.

The Accountant General of Federation immediately after the meeting signed the mandates for the Central Bank of Nigeria to pay the approved revenue allocations into the accounts of the Federal, State and Local Governments.