FAAC Accuses CBN Of Avoiding Meetings For Probe On Federation Accounts

Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) has expressed concerns over the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) refusal to attend critical stakeholder meetings where issues on activities on the federation revenue accounts were meant to be discussed, Naija News reports.

According to FAAC, a Post-Mortem Sub-Committee (PMSC) had sent several invitations to the apex bank to probe its knowledge about revenues moved to the federation account between January 2006 and December 2021.

A statement issued by the PMSC on Tuesday (yesterday) after its monthly meeting said the CBN has failed to make itself available despite several invitations.

The PMSC noted this while providing an update on a proposed review of the FGN/CBN treasury crude account No: 20054141287.

A document made available to newsmen on the subject matter showed that at the last FAAC plenary meeting held on November 18, 2022; a consultant engaged by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), had made a presentation to ascertain whether all revenues generated by ministries, department, and agencies (MDAs) and paid into a designated account with the CBN during the period as mentioned earlier; were fully moved to the federation account for distribution to the federating units as provided by section 162 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).

The matter, Naija News learnt, was later referred to the FAAC sub-committee with a mandate to review and report back. Consequently, the PMSC said an ad hoc committee was constituted to handle the assignment.

It noted that all the members of the ad hoc committee attended the inaugural meeting scheduled for Thursday, December 8, 2022, except CBN which turned down the invitation, stating that “the bank is not answerable to FAAC post mortem sub-committee but the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC)”.

“Therefore, another letter signed by the chairman of RMAFC requesting the bank to send appropriate representatives to the meetings of the ad hoc committee to enable the sub-committee to proceed with the assignment was sent, but CBN did not respond,” TheCable quoted the sub-committee document.

It said further that the ad hoc committee called for another meeting on Thursday, 12th January 2022, and a letter of invitation, signed by the chairman of RMAFC, was sent to CBN, yet the bank refused to attend.

“The sub-committee has gone to this length to ensure that CBN attends the meeting because they are critical to the issue, without their participation the assignment would not proceed,” the document stated.