Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Monday in Abeokuta stressed the need for fair and equitable revenue sharing formula.
Obasanjo stated this when members of Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) paid him an advocacy visit ahead of the proposed review of the existing revenue sharing formula.
He said that the sharing of the nation’s revenue among the different levels of governments must be proportionate to their responsibilities.
Obasanjo also said that items on the exclusive and concurrent lists in the constitution must be quantified to determine how the nation’s resources should be allocated to them.
“We must be able to determine how much security, education or health cost and then determine how much should be allocated to each,’’ he said.
He noted that such quantification could be a difficult exercise, but emphasised that it was necessary to avoid a lopsided or disproportionate revenue sharing formula.
He said such technical exercise might require the services of experts and therefore advised that consultants could be engaged for the purpose.
The former president also stressed the need for the commission not to jettison fund mobilisation aspect of its responsibility.
He expressed concern that adequate attention had not been paid to fund mobilisation.
“I always want to emphasis the nomenclature of your commission and to stress that mobilisation comes before allocation,’’ he said.
“Please note that it is very important that you do not only concentrate on revenue allocation, but you must also seek to find out what the local governments, states and the Federal Government are doing to mobilise revenue.’’
On the issue of local government autonomy, Obasanjo recalled that councils were first allocated funds directly from the centre in 1976 when he was military head of state.
He said the decision was neither a mistake nor by accident, stressing that that level of government was meant to operate as ‘’governments’’ in the real sense of the word since councils are the closest to the people.
He noted that through the local government reforms of 1976, criteria such as population, space and contiguity were considered for creation of local government areas. (LGAs)
He, however, expressed concern that subsequent military governments played down on such important factors in the creation of LGAs.
The chairman of the commission, Mr Elias Mbam, who spoke earlier, said the members were in Abeokuta to consult with Obasanjo, ahead of the review of the existing revenue sharing formulae.
“We feel that we need to consult with you on such a sensitive national issue to tap from your wealth of experience.
“We have been meeting with other national leaders and critical stakeholders across the nation so that the commission can come up with an acceptable formulae,’’ Mbam said.
According to him, the commission will soon start zonal public hearings on the issue.
