Constitutional amendment delaying revenue allocation review – RMAFC Chairman

The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) has said the delay by the National Assembly in completing the amendment of the Nigerian constitution is impacting the review of the revenue allocation formula.

Mr Mohammed B. Shehu, Chairman of RMAFC, disclosed this on Monday in Abuja during a tooling programme organised by the commission in collaboration with the states, and local government councils to enlighten the states and local government officials and FCT area councils on data gathering and management.

The programme has the theme: “Tooling to acquaint states and local government officials on data management: Electronic data collection.”

He said the National Assembly must complete the constitutional amendment process for President Muhammadu Buhari to transmit the draft amendment submitted to him in April 2022 to the assembly.

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“We submitted our report sometime in April 2022 to Mr President. The president has stated that he is waiting for the outcome of the constitutional amendments as initiated by the National Assembly. After the review, he will now forward the new revenue formula to the National Assembly for enactment into law,” he stated. 

The proposed revenue allocation formula is for the federal, state and local governments. He however declined to give specifics on the proposed amendments.

He noted that: “The Revenue allocation Formulae are categorised into Vertical Revenue Allocation Formula and Horizontal Allocation Formula. The Vertical Allocation Formula denotes the sharing arrangement of revenue among the three tiers of government in the federation while the horizontal Allocation Formula denotes sharing arrangement among states and local government councils including Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

“In pursuance to the above constitutional mandate, the commission carried out the review of the Vertical Allocation Formula and submitted the recommendation to Mr President for onward transmission to the National Assembly to come up with a new Revenue Allocation Formula.

“In the same vein, the commission has commenced the process of reviewing the horizontal revenue allocation formula i.e. sharing of Federation Account revenue among states and local government councils in line with the principles, factors and proxies stated in the constitution.”  

Considering the above, he said, “The commission deems it necessary to organise a programme to enlighten the officials of the states and local government councils on the electronic platform for data collection for the review of the current indices used in the Horizontal Allocation Formula.

“There have to be some data and indices we need to collect from the states and analyse before it forms part of the revenue allocation formula.”