By Nse Anthony-Uko
(Sundiata Post) — State Governors on Thursday, met with the minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun over the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting which ended in a deadlock last week.
The meeting was convened by the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari at the Presidential Villa on Thursday.
The FAAC monthly meeting is the forum where money is shared among the federal, states and local governments.
Mrs Adeosun had earlier explained that the deadlock was as a result of disagreement over the figures remitted to the Federation Account by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) which the members of the FAAC considered unacceptable.
She had also said that consequently workers’ salaries for the month of June would be delayed as the stakeholders worked to resolve the issues soon.
Speaking to State House correspondents after the meeting, Zamfara State governor and Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum,
Abdulaziz Yari still assured that the impasse would be resolved soon.
He was accompanied to the meeting by the governors of Kebbi, Atiku Bagudu and Jigawa, Abubakar Badaru.
He said “Initially it was supposed to be a private visit but it has turned to official visit because you know we were supposed to hold the federal allocation committee meeting since last week which ended deadlocked.
“So the Chief of Staff decided to invite the minister so that we can discuss further and see how best we are going to deal with the matter.
“There is headway because Mr President and the minister of finance will meet with the NNPC official so that we can resolve the problem with the federal allocation accounts committee.
On her part, Adeosun said since the deadlock, she had been having a series of meeting with all the relevant stakeholders disclosing that the president has promised to take the next step to resolve the impasse.
According to her “Well, as you know the last FAAC meeting ended in deadlock and since then we have been having series of engagements between ourselves, the governors, the commissioners and of course the various stakeholders.
“Today’s meeting was for me to brief the governors and the chief of staff and by extension Mr. President on the progress we have made so far on our position. Mr President has promised to take the next step and to that extent we are very satisfied.
When asked if the NNPC are not in the treasury single account (TSA), she affirmed that every agency of government is in the account.
She explained “There are, every agency of government is in the TSA. You know FAAC is unique, FAAC is a meeting where all the revenue generating agencies make returns on net of their expenses.
It is in the area of where we have disputes, the disputes is not on the gross revenue but on what has been deducted from that gross revenues give us the net which is being brought into the FAAC. But I think this is a healthy process. We must be satisfied with figures before we sign of on them.
“We must as stakeholders make sure all our agencies are aligned with all the programmes of government in terms of getting this economy really moving. We are still very much dependent on oil, on NNPC for our revenue, so we do need to have sometimes some of this, I see them more as reconciliations than standoffs. I’m very sure we will have the FAAC in the next day or so,” she added.