Local government councils across the country are facing a fresh hurdle in their bid to receive their monthly allocations directly from the Federation Accounts.
Each of the 774 Local Government Areas is now required to furnish the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) with a comprehensive audit of its finances for two years as a prerequisite for direct remittance of their allocations.
The direct revenue disbursement was originally scheduled to commence last month but had to be deferred at the last minute because many of the councils failed to submit the details required to facilitate the direct payments.
Their share of N361.754 billion from the distributable revenue of N1.424 trillion for the month was subsequently channeled to them through the states.
The regulatory bank is already in the process of opening accounts for the LGAs to enable them receive their allocations directly from the Federation Account under the financial autonomy sought for them from the Supreme Court by the Federal Government.
The next allocation is due in a few weeks and there were doubts over the weekend about the ability of the LGAs to submit the two-year audit reports demanded by the CBN before the February meeting of the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) in Abuja where the allocations are made.
Sources at the CBN told The Nation that the bank could not open accounts for the LGAs without a thorough understanding of their current financial status.
‘We cannot just open fresh accounts for the LGAs when many of them have not operated as an independent government entity’, one of the sources said.
The official said that the audit report was important.
An Inter-Ministerial Committee, headed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, is developing a framework to enforce the Supreme Court judgement on local council autonomy.
A member of the committee said that a template is being developed to authorise the Accountant General of the Federation to directly deduct funds designated for specific areas like primary education, healthcare, and other constitutional responsibilities of LGAs from their FAAC allocations and transfer them to the relevant agencies.
