Bickering by states stalls new revenue formula

The prospect of a new revenue formula for the nation has dimmed as states are bickering among themselves over the landmass and terrain types assigned to them by the Office of the Surveyor-General of the Federation.

Following the disagreement among the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, a meeting called by the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission to assign weights to terrain types of the states was stalled.

RMAFC had between Monday and Wednesday held a meeting with some government agencies and the states to decide the weights to be assigned to terrain types in an effort to ensure a more equitable sharing of national revenues.

Those invited to the meeting, which held at the National Women Centre, Abuja, included the Office of the Surveyor-General of the Federation, National Boundary Commission and the Surveyors-General of the 36 states and the FCT.

The OSGF, had in a 2007 report prepared at the behest of RMAFC, classified the terrain types into three – wetlands, highlands and plains.

The three-day meeting was to assign weights to each of the terrains, as terrain will in the new revenue formula carry five per cent weight in the horizontal sharing formula.

It was also expected to discuss the implication of the ruling of the International Court of Justice as it affected the landmass figures of some states and local government areas, especially with regards to Bakassi in Cross River State.

However, because most of the states did not agree on the landmass and the terrain types attributed to them by the OSFG, they could not agree on the weights to be assigned to each of the terrain types.

One of the stakeholders, who attended the meeting, confirmed to our correspondent that every state wanted to be classified as wetland or highland because difficult terrains were meant to carry more weights.

The source, who spoke to our correspondent on the condition of anonymity, said many states that had been classified as plain rejected the classification, arguing that the devastation caused by floods in 2012 was a clear case for them to be classified as wetland.

“Some states queried the rationale for classifying the terrain types into only three. They wanted more classifications that would benefit them as more difficult terrains will ultimately carry more weight and convey a higher revenue advantage on them,” the source said.

Our correspondent learnt that some states from the North wanted a new classification to be known as desert area, while some states in the South wanted another classification to be known as coastal area category.

Following the failure of the meeting to agree on the categorisation of the terrain types, participants called on RMAFC to convene more meetings where the issues would be resolved.

In a communiqué made available to our correspondent by the Head, Public Relations, RMAFC, Mr. Ibrahim Mohammed, the stakeholders held that technical errors in the surveyor-general’s report needed to be discussed at technical sessions.