Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Federal Government of Nigeria disclosed that it has implemented plans to recover the N614 billion budget support loan it gave to 35 states of the federation.
This was according to the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, yesterday while briefing State House correspondents following the National Economic Council (NEC) meeting in Abuja.
“The Minister of Finance briefed NEC on the progress of the facility, detailing how the Federal Government has made a total of over N614 billion available to 35 states being N17.5 billion each,” she said.
She added that the council resolved to set up a committee made up of members of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) who would partner with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Ministry of Finance to draw modalities for repayment.
Mrs Ahmed further disclosed that the balance in the stabilisation account and natural resources development fund as at August 20, 2019, was $95.329 million.
The Federal Government had released a total of N1.64 trillion to states and local governments between 2015 and 2017 as part of measures to stabilise the polity. This came as the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) revealed that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) failed to remit about N77.92 billion to the federation account in 2017.
A report on that year’s sale of crude oil and gas released in Abuja yesterday showed that although the total crude oil production was 692 million barrels, only 240.9 million barrels (representing 35 per cent of the total production) was for the federation.
The report, a pilot study that focuses exclusively and extensively on the sale of Nigeria’s share of crude oil and gas, shows that total revenue from the sale of the federation’s share for that year totalled $14.5 billion (crude oil) and $1.32 billion (gas).
“The sum of N77.92 billion was under-remitted by NNPC to the federation account from domestic crude allocation in 2017. NNPC acknowledges the under-remittance and states that there is an ongoing reconciliation to net off the N77.92 billion,” a section of the 136-page report notes.
According to the report, NNPC deducted N297 billion from earnings from the domestic crude allocation as costs and losses, including N141.6 billion for under-recovery on petroleum products; N25 billion for crude and product losses; and N130.4 billion for pipeline repairs and maintenance.
