The Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission will on Thursday (today) begin a two-week grass-roots programme aimed at mobilising the opinion of state and local governments across the country on how they want revenues to be shared among the three tiers of government.
Our correspondent learnt that towards this end, RMAFC had deployed its commissioners from each state of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory to head different campaign teams in their states of origin.
Each team is expected to speak with critical stakeholders such as state and local government authorities, civil society groups, legislators, judicial officals and professional groups in the states.
The Head, Public Relations, RMAFC, Mr. Ibrahim Mohammed, confirmed these in a telephone interview with our correspondent in Abuja on Wednesday.
While the local government authorities are expected to speak on the thorny issue of joint account with the state governments, the state government officials are expected to speak on the horizontal sharing formula with the Federal Government as well as vertical sharing formula among the states.
The Chairman, RMAFC, Mr. Elias Mbam, had on Tuesday held an emergency plenary session with commissioners of the agency where the modalities for the campaign were discussed.
He followed this up on Wednesday with an address to the members of staff who would accompany the commissioners on how to write reports from the meetings with the stakeholders in the respective states and local government areas.
Mbam explained that the purpose of the tour was to enlighten all stakeholders and the general public on the need to participate and make relevant contributions to the process of the review exercise in order to enable the commission to come up with a just, fair, equitable and acceptable new revenue allocation formula for the country.
He also emphasised that members were to highlight the relevant constitutional mandate of the commission, especially on the review of the revenue formula and on the need for states and local governments to submit memoranda indicating their views on the proposed review.
State governments had through their forum been clamouring for early completion of work on the new revenue formula.
They had in January 2012 hinged their support for the removal of subsidy on petroleum products on the formulation of a new revenue sharing formula.
Equally, while the debate on the new national minimum wage lasted in 2011, many state governors had hinged their capacity to comply with the agreed sums on a reviewed revenue-sharing formula that would favour the states.
Similarly, the House of Representatives had in November 2012 given RMAFC a period of two weeks to present to the National Assembly a new revenue formula for its approval. This, however, could not be realised due to the poor funding of the process.
Revenue sharing formula, which has remained a controversial subject in the Nigerian federation, refers to the proportion of resources accruing to the federation that goes to each of the three tiers of government.