Report – Faac Short of N18.5 Billion UN-Remitted Fund

James Emejo

16 June 2011

Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) has alleged that bank reconciliation statements of revenue collections and transfers to the Federation Account was short of over N18.5 billion.

A report issued by the Post-Mortem Sub-committee of FAAC after a meeting in Abuja, a copy which was made available to THISDAY showed un-remitted balances by revenue generating agencies to include N8, 549,835,197.76 against FIRS Federation Account; N9, 316,254,511.87 against the FIRS VAT Pool Account while the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) is said to owe about N 2,114,573.41 to the Federation Account. The NCS Federation Account also has un-remitted balances of N614, 086,156.64

THISDAY gathered that the affected agencies have been directed to immediately reconcile their accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The report also stated that following a directive to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to” refund the $5 million earlier deducted into the Federation account and stay action on any further deduction in that regard since there is a sum of $15 million in the existing oil and gas account from which $5million could be transferred as minimum operating balance for the new Gas Account”, the corporation has so far transferred the said amount into the federation account although the NNPC management was to confirm the transfer.

The sub-committee also expressed concern over the absence of specified the terms and conditions for the payment of the N51.27 billion loan which was deducted from the Federation Account in February, 2011 as loan for the refund of London Club debt buy back to states.

To that effect, the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation (OAGF) and Federal Ministry of Finance have been instructed to investigate the borrower the money as well as the term of refund to the Federation Account.

Moreover, the sub-committee said it discovered in the course of its analysis that there” was an outstanding amount of $140,198,605.42 US Dollars being the cumulative un-reconciled Royalty Oil lifting sales value as at April, 2011″ stressing that it “drew the attention of the DPR to the matter and requested that the Department should reconcile its books to reflect the true position of its account with the CBN soonest.”

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