While briefing journalists after the National Economic Council (NEC), Adeosun said NNPC is a business that runs on public capital and the state should therefore answer to its owners- the federal government and states:
Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Chairman of the Federal Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), Kemi Adeosun, says the allocation committee will not be reconvened until the government gets to the bottom of what she believes is an under remittance by the state run NNPC. While briefing journalists after the National Economic Council (NEC), Adeosun said NNPC is a business that runs on public capital and the state should therefore answer to its owners- the federal government and states:
“For the purpose of this briefing, we operate NNPC as a business. We have invested public capital in that business and we have expectations of return and when that return falls lower than our expectations, then the owners of this business, which in this case is the federal government and states need to act. She said it was the failure of NNPC to meet this expectation that necessitated a deadlock in FAAC meeting for the third month running:
“So, that was what caused the deadlock yesterday and we really felt the figures the NNPC was proposing for FAAC were unacceptable. We felt that some of the costs couldn’t be justified and so, we have decided that rather than approve the accounts, we will go back and do further work.” Owing to the economic weakness of states who depend on monies shared monthly to pay salaries, Adeosun said the President and Vice president have been consulted, while state governors have been told to endure as negotiations unfold:
“So, further negotiations and interactions is going on with NNPC as we speak. However, we did brief both Mr. President and Mr. Vice President on the deadlock and asked for their support and their forbearance in this because the consequence of this is that, salaries might well be delayed in many states as a result of this.
“But we feel that in order to get the accurate figures that we need, we have asked for forbearance and the governors and the federal government are all in agreement that we need to get to the bottom of those figures. Speaking on the accounts she manages on behalf of the country in her capacity as finance boss, Kemi Adeosun said $80 million was added to the Excess Crude Account (ECA) in May. She also said the government wants to aggressively fund ECA:
“In particular, now that the oil price is now $76 per barrel in the spot market which means that bonny light is about $78, we want to be aggressively putting money away into the excess crude account. So, we are very conscious that this period, this window of relatively high oil price might not last and we will like to be able to save.”
NNPC had said in a statement yesterday that state governors were to blame for the impasse. Group Manager Public Affairs of the Corporation, Ndu Ughamadu, said the governors were requesting for an extra N40 billion, after it had added N35 billion to an agreed monthly remittance of N112 billion subject to sufficient funds from sales of domestic crude oil allocation for the corresponding month after meeting cash call obligations on joint venture operations, as well as deductions of petrol-cost under recovery and pipeline maintenance.