After weeks of horse-trading over revenue under-payment by Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the three tiers of government have finally received the sum of N668.8bn as allocation for May 2018.

Director of Information, Federal Ministry of Finance, Mr Hassan Dodo, confirmed release of the fund in a statement issued in Abuja on Friday.

He said the fund was released to the three tiers of government while reconciliation of the revenue underpayment was still ongoing.

The statement read in part, “Owing to the disagreement on remittances by revenue generating agencies, especially NNPC, the sharing of revenue for May 2018 that was meant to be distributed in June 2018 was put on hold.

“However, the urgent need to cushion the undue hardships being experienced by workers nationwide has made it necessary to distribute the May figures totalling N668.898 billion to the three tiers of government, while efforts are being intensified to address the unsatisfactory remittances.”

The statement added that the N668.89 billion allocation was made up of statutory distributable sum of N575.47bn and N93.42bn for Value Added Tax.

It said the statutory revenue of N575.47 billion received in May was N37.58 billion lower than the N613.05 billion received in April.

From the total statutory revenue of N575.47 billion, the statement said the Federal Government got N268.77 billion; states, N136.324 billion; and local government councils, N105.1 billion.

In addition to the revenue received by the three tiers of government, the statement noted that oil producing states got the sum of the N53.07 billion based on the 13 per cent derivation principle.

For VAT revenue of N93.42 billion, the statement explained that it was shared thus: the Federal Government got N13.45 billion; states, N44.84 billion; while the local government councils received N31.39 billion.

The balance of N3.73 billion was received by the revenue collecting agencies as cost of revenue collection.

Federation Account Allocation Committee meeting, where revenues are usually shared, had within the last one month ended in a deadlock on four different occasions over allegations of revenue underpayment by NNPC.

Chairman, Forum of Finance Commissioners of FAAC, Mr Mahmood Yunusa, had during a chat with journalists in Abuja said the committee was demanding an overhaul of the oil revenue collection system.

He said there was need for the revenue collection process to be strengthened to avoid situations where states were being short-changed.

Punch