States pull out of meeting with FG over ‘discrepancies’ in federation account

The 36 states of the federation on Thursday failed to hold the monthly federal account allocation committee (FAAC) meeting due to alleged discrepancies in federation account figures presented by the federal government.

Mahmoud Yunusa, chairman, forum of finance commissioners, said the decision was taken after consultation with state governors.

He said the governors gave commissioners directive to postpone the meeting pending the reconciliation of all accounts.

“The meeting has been postponed until we reconcile the figures in the accounts,” he said.

“I sincerely apologise for keeping everyone, but this is the position of our principals through the Chairman, Governor’s Forum, even though the matter was discussed at length during NEC when all the governors were present.

“So, we should all take our leave and wait for the next date which will be announced later.”

Yunusa said the finance commissioners, as well as the state accountants-general, would meet next week to decide when to reconvene the meeting.

NAN quoted a commissioner as saying the discrepancies came from the figures presented by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

The latest development is coming four months after the NNPC completed the refund of N450 billion to the federation account.

For 67 consecutive months, the corporation had been paying an additional N6.33 billion into the federation account to be shared among federal, states and local governments.

The payment, which started in September 2011, was due to an audit, which showed that the agency had been under remitting revenue into the federation account.