Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun says the stalemate at the federation account allocation committee (FAAC) meeting will delay the payment of salaries.
Adeosun revealed this while briefing state house correspondents on the deliberations at the national economic council (NEC) meeting presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
She noted that the council was briefed on the FAAC shambles where states resolved to wait until the remittance made by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation is reconciled before they receive their allocations.
“We operate NNPC as a business, we have invested public capital in that business and we have an expectation of a return. and when that return falls lower than our expectations then the owners of the business, which in this case is the federal government and the states need to act,” she said.
“So that is really what caused the deadlock yesterday (June 27). We really felt that the figures that the NNPC was proposing for FAAC were unacceptable; we felt that some of the costs could not be justified.
“And so we have decided rather than approve the accounts we would go back and do further work. Further negotiation and interaction are going on with NNPC as we speak.
“However, we did brief both Mr President and the vice president on the deadlock and asked for their support and their forbearance because the consequence of this is that salaries might be well delayed in many states as a result of this.
“But we feel that in order to get to the accurate figures that we need we have asked for forbearance and the governors and indeed the federal government are all in agreement that we need to get to the bottom of those figures.”
The FAAC meeting, which holds on a monthly basis ended in a deadlock on Wednesday. The NNPC noted in a statement that governors wanted extra N40 billion