The government's own account of August's FAAC sharing gives two totals and two VAT figures, and its VAT deductions exceed the VAT collected

On 17 September 2026 the Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation published, on its website fmino.gov.ng, the press release on the Federation Account Allocation Committee's September meeting. The release is signed by Efe Ovuakporie, Head, Information and Public Relations, and it reports how revenue collected in August 2026 was shared between the Federal Government, the 36 states and the local government councils. Its headline reads: "FG, States And LGCs Share N2.338 Trillion From N3.685 Trillion Gross Revenue For August 2026".

The first sentence of the text gives a different amount. It says the committee, chaired by the Accountant-General of the Federation, Shamseeldeen Ogunjimi, "shared a total sum of N2.58 trillion to the three tiers of government as Federation Account allocation". The closing paragraph goes back to the headline's figure: statutory revenue of N1.565 trillion plus VAT of N773.233 billion, "bringing the total distributable revenue to N2.338 trillion".

Vero Record added up the release's own parts, and this arithmetic is ours. The Federal Government's N804.897 billion, the states' N794.313 billion, the councils' N555.142 billion and N184.388 billion of derivation revenue to oil-producing states come to N2,338.740 billion. That matches the N2.338 trillion in the headline. Nothing in the document adds up to N2.58 trillion.

The VAT section has a second discrepancy. It says that after deductions, "the balance of N733.233 billion was distributed among the three tiers of government", and then gives the shares: N77.323 billion to the Federal Government, N425.278 billion to the states and N270.632 billion to the councils. Those three shares add up to N773.233 billion, not N733.233 billion, and N773.233 billion is also the VAT figure in the release's closing paragraph. The two numbers differ by N40 billion in a single digit.

The statutory section holds together on its own terms. The Federal Government's N727.573 billion, the states' N369.035 billion, the councils' N284.511 billion and derivation of N184.388 billion come to N1,565.507 billion, which matches the stated N1.565 trillion. The Federal Government's statutory and VAT shares combined give N804.896 billion, and the councils' give N555.143 billion. Each is N1 million away from the headline shares, a difference that rounding explains.

The deduction lines are harder to reconcile. The release gives gross VAT for August 2026 as N834.843 billion. It then says that "from the VAT revenue, N100.545 billion was deducted for the cost of collection, while N1.184 trillion was allocated for Transfers, Intervention and Refunds." Taken as written, deductions from the VAT pool come to N1,284.545 billion, about N449.702 billion more than the gross VAT the same paragraph reports. By our arithmetic, a VAT pool of N834.843 billion less N100.545 billion in collection costs leaves N734.298 billion before any transfers, which is less than the N773.233 billion the release says was distributed.

The statutory lines have the same problem in reverse. Gross statutory revenue is given as N2.850 trillion, collection costs as N24.597 billion and transfers, interventions and refunds as N37.014 billion. That would leave about N2,788.389 billion, yet the release says N1.565 trillion was distributed from this pool.

The combined figures do fit together. The release's summary paragraph gives total cost of collection as N125.142 billion, exactly the sum of N100.545 billion and N24.597 billion. It gives total transfers, interventions and refunds as N1.221 trillion, which matches N1.184 trillion plus N37.014 billion. Gross statutory revenue of N2.850 trillion plus gross VAT of N834.843 billion is N3,684.843 billion, the N3.685 trillion in the headline. Taking N125.142 billion and N1,221.014 billion from that leaves N2,338.687 billion, which is the distributable total. By our reading, the totals are internally consistent, but the release may have assigned the large transfer figure and the small one to the wrong revenue streams, or it may be printing figures that do not line up with each other for another reason. The document does not say which, and we have not seen the committee's own worksheets.

There is a smaller inconsistency in how VAT is compared with July. The release sets August's gross VAT of N834.843 billion against "N793.968 billion distributed in the preceding month" and calls the N40.875 billion gap "an increase of N40.875 billion in gross VAT revenue". That compares a gross figure with a distributed figure. It does not show whether July's gross or distributed VAT was N793.968 billion.

None of this shows that any tier of government received more or less money than it was due. The amounts each state and council actually received are set out in the detailed FAAC distribution schedules, which the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and the National Bureau of Statistics publish separately. We searched the Accountant-General's website for the August 2026 communique and schedules and did not find them there. What we examined is the public account the government issued, which is the version most newspapers reproduced.

A difference of this kind matters because the FAAC release is how most citizens, and many state assemblies, learn what came into the Federation Account in a given month. Transfers, interventions and refunds took N1.221 trillion of August's N3.685 trillion gross, about a third by our arithmetic. They are the least explained line in each month's release, and in this release it is not clear which revenue stream they were taken from.

We saved a copy of the release on 29 September 2026, and as of that date the ministry had not corrected it. Vero Record has not received an explanation from the Office of the Accountant-General or the Ministry of Information for the N2.58 trillion opening figure, the N733.233 billion VAT balance, or the order of the deduction lines.

What this rests on

The Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation's press release of 17 September 2026 on the FAAC meeting, downloaded, read and screenshotted by Vero Record on 29 September 2026.

What this does not establish

Which figures the FAAC's own signed communique and distribution schedules carry; whether the mismatched deduction lines are a transposition in the ministry's release or reflect the committee's working figures; and whether any beneficiary's actual allocation was affected. We found nothing to suggest any allocation was affected.