FAAC Meeting Over Subsidy Yet Unresolved

For the second time, the Federation Account Allocation Committee meeting, which was convened to consider statutory revenue for the month of October with a view to allocating same to the three tiers of government, ended in a stalemate over issues connected with controversial fuel subsidy removal.

The meeting, which was presided over by the Minister of State for Finance, Dr. Yerima Ngama, was attended by commissioners of finance from the 36 states of the federation.

Also, the Accountant General of the Federation, Mr. Jonah Otunla, representatives of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, the Federal Inland Revenue Services, and the Nigerian Customs Services, were in attendance.

During last month’s sharing of allocation, members of the committee had stormed out of the meeting over the deduction of N231bn as fuel subsidy.

The aggrieved 36 states representatives questioned the differences in extra-budgetary fuel subsidy deductions by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation and the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency.

The chairman of the commissioners of finance, Mr. Eze Echesi had last month said the states were no longer comfortable with the monthly expenditure profiles on subsidy, which the two agencies usually deducted from the federation account over the months.

He said, “You know for FAAC meeting to take place, there is usually information which we have to agree with by the various stakeholders for it to go on and the technical session of FAAC is one of those critical meetings before the main plenary session, which is for today.

“Now, the accountants- general of the various states that make up the federation account had their technical meeting today and had some unresolved issues among which is the issue of fuel subsidy deduction.”