The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Unacceptable

  • ‘North’s position on resource control’ unacceptable’

    Mr. Tony Ile was the Chairman of the Bayelsa State chapter of Save Nigeria Group (SNG) that fought against the last administration of Mr. Timipre Sylva. He now serves in the administration of Governor Seriake Dickson  as a Senior Special Assistant on Civil Society. He speaks to MIKE ODIEGWU on his boss’ attitude to money and other issues.

    How would you rate the National Conference?

    We have to first and foremost give thanks to Mr. President for initiating such idea. We believe that Nigeria, as a whole is faulty when it comes to even the constitution. Many people have said it is not the people’s constitution. We also believe that if it were the people’s constitution, many issues would have been settled. We can see the skewed inequitable structural organogram of this country; where you have 36 states and the federal capital residing in the north; you also have about 774 local government  areas with 419 local governments belonging to the north and 355 local governments in the south. We have a National Assembly that is dominated by a particular region. So, whatever bill that comes will be at the mercy of those areas.

    We need balance equation. We, also talk about resource control. The region that is producing the oil has been short-changed for quite sometime and it also need a fair share of its revenue. Let us also look at the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) that has been consistently ignored for a long time. This is one of the   bills that will definitely reach out to these communities that are producing the oil because they have been degraded by the activities of these oil companies. So, this conference should ensure that all regions go at a stable pace for peace to reign. I believe that at the end of the conference, Nigerians will smile and the President will be praised for this concept.

    How would you describe the stance of the North against resource control?

    It is very ridiculous and unacceptable. It is like they have a mindset to distort what is due to some regions. They are calling for a conflict, which is not the best for this country. Our northern brothers should know that oil is in the south for now but tomorrow they may also have oil. So, whatever that is due for the South should be given to the South.

    You were in the trenches before the advent of the current administration. You criticised the former administration and now you are a member of the current restoration government. Are things better?

    It has been wonderful. His Excellence Governor Seriake Dickson can be described as a wizard when it comes to development. Within this short period, we have seen tremendous and unbelievable development. Prior to this period, a lot of people felt that the terrain was difficult. But this man has come to change all those perceptions. Today, we can see the first flyover, bridges that are being built within a period of three to four months. We have seen many road projects. Most of the roads are dual carriage ways. We believe that before the end of his first tenure, Bayelsa will really be turned to the Dubai of Africa which the governor has been talking about. We owe him support. The natives and and non-natives should rally round him because, before now, Bayelsa was not like this.

    How have the governor’s policies been tailored to empower the youth?

    There are programmes that His Excellency has mapped out for the youth. The Governor is a product of the youth. He has been a member of the IYC which is a large organisation of Izon youths when it comes to the agitation of the rights of the Ijaw people. He is in touch with the youth. He understands the problems of the youth of Bayelsa State and generally Nigerian youth problems. And since he also understands that unemployment has been the cause of many of these restiveness, he has also set up a Centre for Youth Development which is headed by Boyloaf. That centre is being saddled with the responsibility of training the youth. In the aspect of security, you witnessed when the ex-cultists renounced their cultism to identify with the governor’s empowerment programme.

    This has made the state to be peaceful. No wonder, the state has been described as the most peaceful state in the country. Prior to ths period, it was not like that. It was as a result of programmes that have been put in place to ensure that youths are carried along. Also recently, the Bayelsa State volunteer issue came up. It absorbed over 1, 000 youths for security services and other issues. This is just the beginning. The number will keep on increasing. But you know that the government cannot employ all the youth and that is why the governor is creating government conducive to investors to come in.

    Your governor has been described as a stingy man. What is your take?

    I don’t subscribe to that opinion. He is simply prudent and resilient. That is why many projects are being undertaken. A stingy person is someone who doesn’t want to spend money at all. But if you go round the state, you will see aesthetic buildings springing up. For instance, go to the newly completed Traditional Rulers’ Council Complex.

    Such beautiful places were before built by individuals. People stole money from the government to build such houses. But today, a governor is building such aesthetic buildings for the state. He needs commendations. There are many other projects going on in different parts of the state. So, such person cannot be described as a  stingy person. He is just being prudent because he believes that you have to save for the rainy day. You can also see the dwindling revenue that is coming in from the Federation Account. If he hadn’t been prudent, it would have affected the state to the extent that we wouldn’t have been able to pay salaries. But for the fact that he has been prudent, he has been consistently paying salaries. There are some states that are not able to pay salary of workers. Without his prudence, we wouldn’t have achieved the flyover and other projects such as the Ogobiri Bridge, the road leading to Ayama and going to Oporoma. Recently, the Deputy Governor drove down to Nembe which is first in history in this part of the region.

    To build such infrastructure in a state that is 96 per cent water is not easy. It requires huge amount of money. We were all there when the governor presented a cheque of N2 billion to the company that is handling the Nembe Road. It is not easy. We had an administration that was here for five years but could not do a road to even his community. But this is somebody that just came on board because he has passion for the state. He is Hungry for development and he doesn’t want to believe that we have a terrain that cannot be developed.

    So, he has broken the jinx and we have to commend him for that.

  • ‘Derivation formula less than 50 per cent unacceptable to Niger Delta’

    Mr Sunny Amorighoye Mene, in this interview with SHOLA O’NEIL, explains why Niger Delta must have 50 per cent of money derived from oil.

    What is the position of the Niger Delta and Itsekiri people on the recent call for the reduction of the 13 per cent derivarion?

    First, let me clarify that Nigeria is a Federal Republic and resource control is an essential component of a Federal Republic. If our founding fathers at independence accepted this political arrangement of a federal structure, then the argument to the contrary is false and disservice to those who fought for our independence. The position they are pushing threatens the unity and peaceful coexistence of Nigeria because, except we are deceiving ourselves, we cannot say in one breath that we are a federal republic and track back on the tenets of the federalism.

    The oil activities in the Niger Delta have completely devastated our environment; devastation of our flora and fauna, extinguishing our means of livelihood and truncating sustainable development of our communities.  When the ACF claim that they are the owners of oil or that it is owned by Nigeria without looking at the devastating effect of its exploitation, they seem to call us fools and this is what is really annoying us. As a people who are feeling the impacts of the oil exploration while people who have failed to exploit their own resources fail to realise the problems we are passing through and then begin to claim that the resources belong to them; it is provocative to the extreme.

    The postulation of the ACF is that their resources were used to exploit the oil…

    (cuts in) That is not true. They should realise that they are talking to very educated people in the Niger Delta, who followed the developments of this country, who actively participated in the negotiation of Nigeria independence. We do not know what they think when they say it is the northern resources that was used to develop the oil resource. Oil resources in the Niger Delta were developed through joint venture; foreign investors brought their money to exploit oil and pay royalties and share profit with government.  At what time was the northern resources used to develop the oil in the Niger Delta?

    You see, this kind of assertion provokes the Niger Deltans because their position tends to look at us as uninformed, uneducated and it is not true. I say with all authority that northern resources were not used to develop oil resources in the Niger Delta. That is why we are calling for restructuring of Nigeria because until we do, we cannot move forward. Some people cannot at one end of the country refuse to be productive, just lay back and enjoy oil resources without contributing anything and at the end of the day turn around to call us fools.

    That is why we say, let us go back and  renegotiate through a conference, sovereign or whatever, the basis of our coexistence because what we practice today is not what was  thought by our founding fathers; we are not practising federalism. It is clear that the Nigerian project today is not working, the country called Nigeria has failed.

    The position paper by the north also raised the issue of the South not wanting to play the role of being their bothers’ keeper because of demand for resource control; do you not think they have a point?

    We are very willing to be our brothers’ keeper that is why we are not saying we want to take everything. We are saying in a federal system, we will pay appropriate tax to the centre. All over the world, when you pay tax, it is used to take care of those who are not as endowed as others. It is a universal principle. But in a situation where people who do not own the resources are saying they will take it from the owners not matter what… they are also saying that the meagre 15percent is more than enough? That is being insensitive to our plights. When we pay tax to the centre, it can be used to provide education, healthcare and other essential services for areas that don’t have the resources.

    Money can also be given to them to develop their own resources so that all of us can contribute something to the central purse. You have 44 local governments in certain states where all they do at the end of the month is collect money, share the money and go back to their villages and when it is end of the month again, they come back, share money and go back. It is promoting laziness. Leaders we have in Nigeria today are political rent takers and a country cannot survive like that. A country that does not produce, that is only dependant on these meagre earnings will not do well economically. We are prepared to concede something, but to say they want to take all and give five percent, is to threaten the unity and peaceful coexistence of Nigeria because the people of the Niger Delta will not take it: we will not take anything less than 50 per cent. We accept 50 per  cent to be very considerate, anything less than that is exploitative, unacceptable and I tell you will threaten the peaceful coexistence of Nigeria.

    What do you see as the problem with the current political dispensation in Nigeria?

    Federalism recognises the fact that the people are not homogenous but are a diverse people. So to rule the diverse people, they adopt federalism where their diversity is recognised and you rule them on the basis of that diversity. In Nigeria today we are being ruled as homogenous people where someone at the centre will give directive and policy that tends to portray that we are homogenous; we are not we are very diverse. Until we recognise this diversity and governor the country on the basis of our diversity, we will not move forward. That is why the country is not moving forward.

  • Dame Patience’s unacceptable meddlesomeness

    Dame Patience’s unacceptable meddlesomeness

    Is there no end to farcical governance in Nigeria? Last Friday, the first lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, peremptorily summoned a number of state and federal officials to some of the meetings she conducted in the bid to end the abduction of over 200 schoolgirls from the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State. No matter how altruistic and good-natured she is, she has no right whatsoever to conduct the sort of meetings she has saddled herself with, and absolutely no right to summon state and federal officials to those meetings. It speaks volumes of the confusion, inertia and irresponsibility pervading the seat of government in Abuja that just as the president himself was setting up a fact-finding panel to look into the abductions, his wife was engaged in a five-hour meeting with officials to tackle the national and international embarrassment. The first lady’s meetings, which began on Friday, was expected to continue yesterday, if no one in the seat of government had commonsensically called her to order.

    Dame Patience’s first reaction after her first Friday meeting was to decry the role of the state government in the abductions, accuse it of insensitivity and deliberate political provocations, lampoon what she insinuated could be a sexed-up number of abductees, and brusquely order the Borno governor to secure the schoolgirls’ release or risk a march upon the seat of government in Borno, Abuja and the National Assembly. These orders and provocations are insufferable. Is this what governance in Nigeria has become? Is the first lady not aware she is, in short, directly indicting her husband’s presidency of gross irresponsibility and inertia? She is no virtuoso in the art of diplomatese and elegant talk. But she carried her indiscretion to an intolerable level when she thundered that once she was involved in a matter, she always achieved result. She had worked behind closed doors, but now she must work in the open, she revealed without the timorousness her place beside her husband dictated. She spared no thought for how her statements made her husband look inactive, if not completely paralysed.

    The cause of the controversy and trigger for Dame Patience’s meddlesomeness are of course President Goodluck Jonathan’s dereliction of duty and gross inability to appreciate the weight and impact of the abductions. Nearly two weeks after the abductions – and estimates of the number of schoolgirls involved has shifted from 129 to 234 and now, courtesy of the security services in Borno State, 276 – the president was yet to declare a mini-emergency over the abductions, notwithstanding all the frightening connotations of sex slavery. Worse, a few days after the schoolgirls were taken, the president continued his political rallies with barely a thought for the unfortunate girls and their anguished parents. More damningly, the president has not deemed it fit to visit the sorrowing parents, comfort them and lead the charge, at least metaphorically, against the Boko Haram abductors, a charge his wife now seems preposterously eager to lead even if it costs her dearly. It is perhaps in response to these acute failings that the president has set up a belated fact-finding panel, and the first lady, to begin to enact a series of measures to turn the heat on any other person and institution but her husband.

    The appalling tactics by the first lady completely ignore the fact that she has no right at all to summon any public official, let alone directly intervene in state policy and affairs. Already she has begun to interpret and even second-guess the constitution in her usual obtruding manner. She describes the Borno State governor as chief security officer of the state under a state of emergency, and compared the abducted girls to the kidnappings in the Niger Delta over which the former President Olusegun Obasanjo riled and harried her husband when Dr Jonathan was Governor of Bayelsa State. It is not clear who all the officials that attended Dame Patience’s unlawful five-hour Friday meeting were, but WAEC officials were among. So, too, were the Borno State Commissioner for Women Affairs and the Chibok schoolgirls’ principal. As follow-up, she also summoned a retinue of other state and security officials. If they attended her meeting of yesterday, they should be charged with treason.

    If President Jonathan cannot rein in his wife, the rest of the country should come in forcefully to help him in order not to allow her ridicule Nigeria before the whole world. The abduction of the schoolgirls and the lackadaisical approach of the Jonathan government to their rescue, as well as the ludicrous efforts to make Borno State the scapegoat of the whole saga, have already lowered us in the esteem of the world. Dame Patience should not compound the country’s misery. It is indeed surprising that President Jonathan indulges the first lady so casually. Her very first involvement and comments on the abduction saga heavily indicted her husband. She gave the impression she was courageous, pushy and purposeful, and her husband effete and distracted. She might very well be pushy. But she should look for other more mundane causes fitting for her role as first lady to be pushy and purposeful about. The Nigerian constitution does not give her a role in state affairs; she should not appropriate what has not been vouchsafed to her by any law in the country. But if she insists on meddling in state matters, then we must put her in her place by cautioning and censuring any public official that honours her invitation on anything but private matters.

    The Jonathan government has set up a fact-finding panel, perhaps because there are insinuations the girls are not really missing. Though annoyingly belated, the panel must be allowed to work and submit its report. But care must be exercised not to politicise the matter, nor to look for scapegoats. Security is strictly the responsibility of the federal government, while governors are chief security officers of their states in name only. If any scapegoat is needed, Nigerians are not so dimwitted as not to know who has been remiss in his responsibility. The clumsy attempt to focus attention on the name(s) of the affected Chibok school is unnecessary. The school remains a girls’ school, even though it was collapsed temporarily into a mixed school for the purpose of letting some male final year students from other afflicted schools write their WAEC at a school previously but erroneously thought to be safe.

    We must not be distracted from finding urgent means of rescuing the abducted girls, which was where we started from in the first instance before Dame Patience introduced burlesque into a matter requiring only her empathy. For now, Dame Patience is not president, and neither she nor her husband, nor snivelling and grovelling state officials must give the impression she could pretend to be one whenever she was minded to be.

  • Unacceptable behaviour

    Unacceptable behaviour

    We know that things have degenerated so much in our schools – standards, morals and what have you. But we can hardly imagine a situation where students would lure one of their own out of the school premises only to stab him to death. Bizarre, you would say; but that was what happened to Fatai Badmus, a Senior Secondary School 2 (SS) student of Meteorite Standard School, Ayetoro, Ogun State, last month. Fatai had left his father on December 8 after visiting the father in Lagos. Unknown to the father, Razaq Akanbi Badmus, which was the last time he would see his son alive.

    According to a news report, his father, a pool sub-manager at the Facility Department of the National Sports Commission, later got the bad news about his son’s death, following a squabble between SS3 students of the school and Fatai’s classmates. The distraught father said, “I later received more information that some students in SS3 stabbed him on his chest and stomach. They stabbed him because he stopped a fight between SS2 and SS3 students”. Fatai was said to have rushed to report the fight to the school authorities who reportedly stopped it. This angered some of the SS3 students who then lured him out of the school premises to where they stabbed him. He was rushed to a hospital where the doctors battled to save his life; unfortunately, he could not make it due to the severity of the injuries he sustained in the attack.

    We have known for long that cultism has crept into some of our secondary schools, but there seems to be little that many governments are doing about the development. Indeed, we seem to have resigned to fate that the schools are a reflection of the larger society where standards, decorum and all such values have gone with the winds. But things cannot continue like this. We need to address the issues seriously before primary school pupils begin to catch the bug. Parents too have a big role to play because most of them too have abandoned the training of their children to teachers and others.

    If reports on the clash are correct, Fatai was a peacemaker. Indeed, the proprietor, Mr Joseph Afolahan, attested to this: “Fatai was a loving boy. He was a peacemaker and I told his father not to pay school fees next term because of his good behaviour. I’m grieving over him …”, he said. Could the attack on Fatai have been due to his exceptionally nice behaviour? Could it have been the result of peer envy? This was a boy who, according to his father, had trained as an aluminum technician and who was doing well on the job. His parents must have regretted the day they sent him to school to go and better his lot in life. It is sad that such a promising child was wasted by people that were supposed to be his mates.

    However, nothing we have said should be taken to mean that we believe Fatai was right or wrong; but we detest a situation where students or anyone for that matter would want to settle scores with violence. People should not take the laws into their hands. Mr. Afolahan put the issue succinctly when he said that “For secondary school students to become killers does not portend good for the community and it is unacceptable”. We concur and are so pleased that he is already cooperating with the police who have arrested two suspects in connection with the incident.

    The police should not allow Mr. Badmus to sweat much before getting justice for him. His son cannot be brought back to life, no doubt; but the state can assist him by making the law take its course on the killer-students. This will serve as a deterrent to others who might want to see murder as a way of life or as a means of settling scores.

     

  • Unacceptable lopsidedness

    Unacceptable lopsidedness

    DELIBERATIONS on the contentious Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) on the floor of the Senate last week confirmed, once again, the appalling lack of transparency, accountability, justice and equity that has continued to hobble the oil sector, which is the mainstay of the Nigerian economy. Even though the Bill eventually smoothly scaled the Second Reading and proceeded to the committee stage on Thursday, this was not before some very shocking revelations during the debate on Wednesday as regards the lopsidedness in the ownership of oil blocs in the Niger Delta.

    Before the dramatic turn of events following the disclosure on the oil blocs, the debate had assumed a North-South dichotomy among the senators. It was not surprising that northern senators vehemently opposed key sections of the PIB, particularly the provision for the allocation of 10 per cent net profit of oil companies operating in the Niger Delta, to host communities. Like other members of the northern political elite who had persistently voiced their opinion on the matter, the senators were not convinced by the argument that the host communities deserved to be compensated for the gross devastation of their environment, livelihood and even health in the process of prospecting for oil.

    The standard argument from the north has been that the Niger Delta is already being overcompensated through the 13 percent derivation fund it receives, as well as the establishment of the Ministry of the Niger Delta and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NNDC).

    Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Business, Senator Ita Enang, however, introduced a major twist to the debate on Tuesday when he disclosed that northerners control 83 percent of oil blocs in the country. Urged by the Senate President, David Mark, to buttress his allegation with facts, Senator Enang reeled out names of beneficiaries of oil bloc allocations, their companies and the oil fields they control. His facts have not been controverted since then.

    Those named as owners and operators of the oil blocs include Alhaji Mai Deribe from Borno State, owner of Cavendish Petroleum that operates OML 110; Mallam Sanusi Lamido from Kano, a major shareholder and director of Seplatform Petroleum that operates ASUOKPUJUMTU marginal field; General Theophilus Danjuma whose South African Petroleum Limited (SAPETRO) controls OPL 246 in partnership with Total Upstream Nigeria Limited and Brasoil Oil Services Company Nigeria Limited and Alhaji Sani Bello of Kontagora, Niger State, who operates OML 112 and OML 117 through his AMNI International Petroleum and Development Company.

    Others are Alhaji Indimi of Oriental Energy Resources Limited that operates OML 115 as well as the Oduok and Ebok fields; former Petroleum Minister and OPEC Chairman, Alhaji Rilwan Lukman who manages AMNI oil blocs. Others include Alhaji Aminu Dantata who operates OML 108 through Express Petroleum and Gas Limited as well as the trio of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua and Alhaji Ado Bayero who own INTEL Oil Services with substantial stakes in Nigeria’s oil exploration in Sao Tome and Principe. Some of the non- northerners in the industry include Mike Adenuga, Emeka Offor and Yinka Folawiyo.

    It is ironical that the north, whose leaders have vehemently opposed the demand by the Niger Delta for a more just share of oil revenues, actually controls the bulk of the region’s oil business. Many of these companies reportedly make more profit from their oil blocs than the PIB seeks to pay host communities as compensation.

    The Senate should not sweep this issue under the carpet. It should demand full details of oil bloc allocations and take corrective measures to ensure fairness and balance. We do not even know why the oil blocs would be allocated to individuals, with many of them not having the capacity to utilise them optimally. All these underscore the urgent need to pass the PIB that will ensure transparency in the sector and prevent the kind of abuses responsible for the current lopsidedness in the allocation of oil blocs.

  • Unacceptable!

    Unacceptable!

    Another subsidy scandal brews for NNPC as it gives a woolly explanation for a $1.5bn deal

    Scandals and scams have become the daily staple of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC. It seems as if no day passes without a fresh simmering can of worms bursting open and besmirching the gilded facade of the oil giant. More worrisome, however, is that the bumbling behemoth seems not to give a damn about what the world thinks of its conducts and public morality.

    The current caper on its table is the $1.5 billion foreign loan it allegedly took to import petroleum products into Nigeria. A foreign wire service had reported that NNPC had concluded a loan of the above sum from creditors to offset fuel subsidy imports. Apparently, the NNPC did not take cognisance of the fact that no such huge transaction could be consummated anywhere in the world without attracting the attention of international media. While it routinely hides such businesses from the Nigerian people and press, the entire world could not be hoodwinked.

    Alarmed by the sheer impunity of this transaction which was neither captured in the 2013 budget proposals nor in the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, a Joint Committee of the House of Representatives had moved quickly to investigate the ‘loan’. Laying its defence before this committee, an NNPC team led by petroleum resource minister, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, group managing director of the NNPC, Mr. Andrew Yakubu, the director-general, Debt Management Office, DMO, Mr. Abraham Nwankwo and the chairman, Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, RMAFC, Mr. Elias Mbam, tried to convince the House committee that the $1.5 billion facility is not a loan.

    In her explanation, Alison-Madueke told the lawmakers that NNPC neither took such a loan nor was planning to do so. She said that the corporation entered into a “forward sales agreement” with its international creditors that supplied products to the country in order to settle outstanding liabilities dating several years. Elucidating further, the minister said that, “NNPC has a legacy of liabilities and this has resulted in cash flow challenges.

    “The Board of Directors approved this transaction; it was not a loan; there was no $1.5 billion loan taken by the NNPC; but there is an internally accepted forward sales agreement to enable it offset fuel subsidy debts,” Mrs. Alison-Madueke was quoted to have said.

    NNPC’s helmsman, Yakubu lending credence to his boss’ submissions said that the debt accrued over the years from the costs the corporation incurred on behalf of the Federal Government for fuel imports. He listed the costs to include demurrage on imported products, pipeline damage and loss of products.

    Yakubu explains: “The $1.5 billion will be used to offset part of the petroleum imports bills. The borrower will be the Special Purpose Vehicle, SPV, (an orphan company with shareholding by trustees established under a trust instrument) that has no connection with NNPC. The forward sale of crude by NNPC to the SPV will be a true sale at official selling price of Nigerian crude oil ruling at the date of lifting.” Yakubu also intimated the House committee that the total foreign debt owed by the NNPC in this subsidy importation was $3.5 billion, noting that $1.5 billion only covered the first phase of the repayment agreement, leaving a balance of $2 billion yet unpaid.

    It is interesting that the NNPC is so embroiled in its own porridge of malfeasance that the more it tries to explain its shenanigans, the more it uncovers its sordid behind. Though we find it most curious that the House committee led by Ajibola Muraina has announced an indefinite adjournment of the investigation, there are a few questions it must ask the NNPC. First, who are the creditors of this $3.5 billion import bill; when exactly was it consummated, when were the products shipped in and what about the supporting documents?

    Nigerians also need to know whether the NNPC and the minister have the power to authorise an oil-for- cash- deal of this magnitude and why was a deal of this nature not conducted in a transparent manner? What manner of computation was used in a deal that will ship out 15,000barrels of crude per day for five years just to pay back $1.5 billion; how would NNPC pay back the remaining $2 billion? There are a dozen more questions. Add all this to the fact that this same House is probing NNPC for alleged N6.2 trillion unremitted revenues and the fact that NNPC cannot give accurate account of crude oil production and shipments and the mess becomes peculiarly NNPC. This cannot be the best way to run a country’s biggest business. Again, we call for a total rethink of this odious behemoth.

  • Unacceptable excuse

    Unacceptable excuse

    • Now is the time to review revenue allocation formula

    The Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) is one of the most important agencies with functions that are critical to the smooth and efficient running of the Nigerian federation. This agency not only has the responsibility to fix the remuneration of public office holders, it also has the constitutional function of determining the allocation of revenue among the three tiers of government, namely the federal, state and local governments. Its constitutional function is predicated on the pragmatic consideration that in a dynamic federal system, the allocation of resources among the various tiers of government cannot be static.

    Rather, the share of revenues accruing to various tiers must be periodically reviewed to reflect shifting powers, responsibilities and obligations of the federating units. Against this background, it is exceedingly astounding that the RMAFC has been unable to review the country’s revenue allocation formula since the commencement of this dispensation in 1999. This is even more surprising since the commission and other critical stakeholders in the polity are agreed that such a review has been long overdue. Is there any hope that the RMAFC will live up to its responsibility any time soon? The answer, unfortunately, is a resounding no.

    The commission’s spokesman, Mr. Ibrahim Mohammed, said that it has no plan to review the revenue allocation formula in the nearest future. And the preposterous reason he gave for this situation is “inadequate funding”. An item for which the commission lacks funding, according to Mr. Mohammed, is the holding of town hall meetings in each of the country’s six geo-political zones, even though he noted that request for funding of the process had been made in the 2013 budget proposal.

    Could lack of funding be the reason why the RMAFC has not discharged its crucial constitutional responsibility over the last 13 years? For us, this is simply a question of absolute lack of seriousness. The leadership of the commission has apparently been satisfied simply to receive its own financial running costs while being content to letting the status quo remain. If not, why has the commission not taken the initiative all these years to mobilise key stakeholders in ensuring it gets the necessary funding to discharge its constitutional responsibilities?

    But the blame is not that of the RMAFC alone. The Nigerian Governor’s Forum has been one of the most vociferous critics of the subsisting revenue allocation formula. During the fuel subsidy crisis in January this year, the governors hinged their support for the removal of the purported subsidy on a review of the revenue allocation formula in favour of the states. Similarly, in 2011, many governors insisted that their capacity to pay the new minimum wage would depend on a review of the revenue sharing formula to reflect their added responsibility to workers.

    Currently, the revenue allocation formula is skewed in favour of the Federal Government, which receives 52.68 percent of national revenues while the 36 states receive 26.72 percent and local governments 20.6 percent. The subsisting revenue allocation formula has been criticised for encouraging an over- centralised federal structure that breeds corruption and inefficiency. While the Federal Government obviously has too much funds at its disposal, the states and local governments where the people actually reside have insufficient funds to meet their obligations to the people.

    There is every need for an urgent review of the revenue allocation formula. And there is no reason why the states cannot work with their members in the National Assembly to actualise this objective. Yes, there is the problem of corruption and mismanagement of funds at all levels. The solution to this is to strengthen and enforce the anti-corruption laws rather than retaining an outmoded revenue allocation formula that gives too much idle funds to the Federal Government.