State Governors under the aegis of Nigeria Governors’ Forum, NGF have concluded plans to meet President Muhammadu Buhari on the need to present the draft new revenue allocation formula to the National Assembly as a bill for enactment before the expiration of the current administration. Speaking with Journalists at the end of the meeting of the Governors in Abuja, Chairman of NGF and Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Tambuwal said, “We also discussed the new revenue formula submitted to Mr President by the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission and the need for us to approach Mr President on the need for him to present the new draft formula to the National Assembly before this administration winds up. “We are going to meet with Mr President as a forum and we’ll appeal to him to present that formula to the National Assembly. We will see.” The Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission had in April 2022 presented the report of the review of the vertical revenue allocation formula to President Buhari when it failed to meet the 2021 deadline.
In 2021, the Chairman of the commission, Elias Mbam had said that the report would be presented to the President by December 31, 2021, but at the end of the day. the Commission failed to meet this deadline. The New formula proposes 45.17% for FG, 29.79% for states, 21.04% for Local Government Areas, LGAs. According to him, under Special Funds, the report by the commission recommended 1.0 per cent for Ecology, 0.5 per cent for Stabilisation, 1.3 per cent for Development of Natural Resources, and 1.2 per cent for the FCT. The old revenue formula was designed during the tenure of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. With the new formula, the Federal Government gets 52.68 per cent, the 36 states get 26.72 per cent while the 774 local government areas in the country share 20.60 per cent every month. The proposed formula, therefore, suggested an upward review for states and local governments, but a downward review for the Federal Government. Explaining the major reasons for the exercise, Mbam had said that since the last review was conducted in 1992, 29 years ago, the political structure of the country had changed with the creation of six additional states in 1996, which brought the number of states to 36. The number of local governments councils also increased from 589 to 774. Mbam had said, ‘‘There have been considerable changes arising from the policy reforms that altered the relative share of responsibilities of the various tiers of Government such as deregulation, privatisation and the lingering controversies over funding of primary education, primary healthcare.”
Speaking further on the meeting of the governors that was earlier scheduled to be a valedictory session for the 17 outgoing Governors, but was put off for another day, Tambuwal said, “It’s nothing unusual. It’s a normal meeting of governors where we discussed issues concerning the country, the sub-nationals and of course, democracy and good governance. “Today, we discussed the guidelines by the NFIU on financial regulation that is working on how to ensure that Nigeria is taking out of the grey list of the Financial Task Force. We also discussed the issue of primary healthcare and the progress made so far during our induction course. Some states that have attained some milestones are going to receive awards for their performance. We also discussed the new revenue formula submitted to Mr President by the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission and the need for us to approach Mr President on the need for him to present the new draft formula to the National Assembly before this administration winds up.
“We also discussed the issue of stamp duties being owed to both the Federal Government and the states and warehoused by the Central Bank and we are working to make sure that it is released for disbursement to both the Federal Government and the states.” On his assessment of the NGF as the outgoing Chairman, the Sokoto State Governor said, “As a forum and an institution of governance that we inherited from our leaders, the past governors; I believe that a lot of achievements have been made, particularly as we made sure that we maintain tand unity the cohesion, the non-partisanship of this platform and making sure that in all that we do, it is about Nigeria first and of course, our various states.”
