Nigeria earned gross crude oil revenues of N666.32 billion in January, down from N892.70 billion in December owing to production outages, the accountant general said on Wednesday.

Nigeria distributed N614.0 billion to the three tiers of government in January, compared with N611.08 billion in December, Jonah Otunla announced on Wednesday after a meeting of the Federal Accounts Allocation Committee.

In order to keep distributions steady when crude oil revenues dip, government has to top up using crude oil savings, which have reduced sharply in recent years despite a record high period for oil prices.

“This (revenue decrease) was due to a drop in crude oil lifting as a result of production shut down at Bonga Terminal, drop in production at Qua Iboe Terminal and also the downward review of estimates by oil producing companies,” Mr Otunla said in a statement.

Addressing journalists after the meeting of the committee, the Minister of State for Finance, Yerima Ngama says that the Federal Government got a total of N260 billion while the thirty six states are to share the sum of N131 billion .The local governments Councils will share a total of N101billion.

Reacting to the funds owed the Federations account by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the minister said that so far, a total of N46 billion has been refunded to its account.