After much pressuring by the states, the Federal Government has finally yielded and paid the N156 billion controversial February arrears.
This was disclosed by the Minister of State for Finance, Dr Yerima Lawan Ngama after an extraordinary Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting yesterday in Abuja that the arrears has been paid in one fell swoop.
As a result of this lump sum payment for the February arrears, the minister of state for finance stated that augmentation for the month of May amounting to N92 billion would now be paid in July.
At the end of yesterday’s FAAC meeting the three tiers of government shared N620.656 billion as allocation for the month of May
A breakdown of the disbursements showed that N502.617 billion was shared as statutory allocation from which the federal government got N235.778 billion; the 36 states got N119.590 billion while local governments shared N92.199 billion after the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) had made their deductions. N74.873 billion was shared from Value Added Tax (VAT) proceeds, N35.549 billion from SURE-P and N7.617 billion from monthly refund made by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). N48.874 billion was distributed to the oil producing states as 13 per cent derivation.