The 36 state governors have expressed worry that they may not be able to pay salaries in few months due to dwindling revenue.
The Governors under the auspices of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) expressed their concern in a presentation before the House of Representatives ad-hoc committee investigating the daily consumption o premium motor spirit (PMS) in Nigeria.
The Head of Legislative Liaison, Peace and Security of the forum, Mrs Fatima Usman, who made the submission, said this is as a result of dwindling revenue from the federations account.
Mrs Usman, accused the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited of arbitrary deduction from revenue accruable to the federation account as well as the dwindling fortune of remittances to the federal coffers.
According to her, FAAC net oil and gas revenues have been declining since 2019 and were projected to decline significantly in 2022 by between N3 billion and up to N4.4 billion unless action was taken urgently.
She said: “Although the operating environment has significantly worsened since the report was released, with NNPC now consistently reporting zero remittance to the federation accountant as profit from joint venture (JV), production sharing contract (PSC) and miscellaneous operations, the position of the Forum remains generally the same.
According to the NGF representative, an analysis of the average monthly PMS consumption by states showed that a third of the country accounts for over 65 per cent consumption of PMS.
She added that the analysis showed that the Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Abuja, Delta, Kano, Kwara, Edo, Rivers, Kaduna, Kebbi and Adamawa accounted for 65 per cent of PMS consumption in the country.
Mrs Usman revealed that households directly consume only about 25 percent of the PMS that is consumed nationally, with the remaining three-quarters being consumed by firms, MDAs, transport operators or smuggled to neighboring countries where the PMS price is nearly three times what it is in Nigeria.
The NGF further estimated that rising inflation between 2020 and 2021, was expected to have pushed an additional 5.6 million Nigerians into poverty.
RN