FG, States, May Clash Over N450bn NNPC Debt

The federal government may be on a collision course with the 36 state governments over the failure of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to pay its N450billion debt to the federation account.

The indication emerged on Friday shortly after this month’s Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeing in Abuja.

The lingering NNPC debt had been a subject of controversy since the last two years with the immediate past minister of State for Finance, Mr Remi Babalola, was reported to have summoned the Group Managing Director of the corporation to explain how the debt would be paid

Speaking on the N450bn debt, the Chairman of Commissioners’ Forum, Alhaji Rebo Usman, said that since the audit committee had submitted its report to the ministry of finance, the state will now renew the call for the payment of their allocation.

“The N450bn debt is an issue we discussed extensively at the meeting ad we were informed that the interim audit report has come in and our position is that we don’t have anything to do with the issue of audit and we have agreed on that N450bn and we have resolved that what will come to us in our next meeting is our payment schedule,” he said.

“If NNPC has an issue with the government, they should sort themselves out because we are not going to listen to any stories again. They should come up with a payment plan of the N450bn that belongs to the states and local governments, while they sort themselves out with the Federal Government.”

However, the meeting on Friday which was presided over by the Minister of State for Finance, Hajiya Yabawa Wabi, also had in attendance the commissioners of finance from the 36 states, the acting accountant General of the Federation, Mr. Aderemi Ogunsanya; Director of Home Finance in the Ministry of Finance, representatives of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Federal Inland Revenue Services, the Nigerian Customs ,among others.

At the meeting, which was convened to consider statutory revenue for the month of December 2009, a total of N410.78bn was shared among the three tiers of government. The amount, when compared with what was shared in November 2010, represented an increase of N3.22bn or 0.78 per cent.

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Posted by admin on Jan 14 2011. Filed under Headlines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry