The Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) on Wednesday agreed to share N647.39 billion to federal, states and local governments as revenue generated in February.

The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, said this in Abuja, while briefing journalists on the outcome of the monthly FAAC meeting.

She said after deductions for cost of collections had been made to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Nigeria Customs and the Department of Petroleum Resources, the Federal Government received N257.92 billion.

Mrs. Adeosun said in accordance with the revenue sharing formula, the 36 states governments received N130.82 billion, while the Local Government Councils received an allocation of N100.86 billion.

In addition, she announced that N57.35 billion, representing 13 per cent of the mineral revenue generated in February, was also shared among the oil producing states.

To this end, Mrs Adeosun said the nation generated N444.29 billion as mineral revenue and N112.99 billion as non-mineral revenue in February.

On discrepancies in figures submitted by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), she said she would be meeting with the Group Managing Director to resolve the issues.

She pledged to ensure that the federation was not short-changed by any of its revenue generating agencies.

Meanwhile, the Chairman, Commissioners of Finance Forum, Mahmoud Yunusa, said the state governments agreed to collect the available funds so that Nigerians would not have a bleak Easter.

“After the FAAC meeting was suspended yesterday, another meeting was called in the night, where we met, discussed and agreed that the outstanding balance with NNPC would be followed to its logical conclusion.

“However, Easter is approaching and a lot of people will be relying on their salaries for this purpose. I am sure that many people will be travelling and attending weddings.

“So we don’t want to disrupt Nigerians from enjoying themselves this holiday.

“To this end, we looked at the figure made available for sharing and it was more than the money made available last month by more than N11 billion. So give or take, we are not losing,” he said.

Mr Yunusa said the states had agreed to accept the figures as presented by the NNPC temporarily to pay salaries and then later engage NNPC for further discussions and reconciliation.

He said the states plan to meet with the accountants of the NNPC to begin the process of reconciliation within the next 48 hours.

According to him, whatever additional funds come into the federation’s account after the reconciliation will be shared by the three tiers of government as soon as possible in accordance with the revenue sharing formula.

(NAN)