A foundation member of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Mr. Osita Okechukwu, has canvassed the urgent need to reduce the huge extant revenue allocation to the federal government from 52 per cent to 40 per cent, to guarantee ultimate balanced federalism.
This, he said, would improve the progress and prosperity of our dear citizenry, while ultimately expanding the frontiers of our grassroots democracy.
He stated his position while addressing journalists a few hours after Mohammed Bello Shehu, the chairman of the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), announced plans to review the Revenue Allocation Formula.
The former Director-General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON) expressed support for the proposed review of the existing Revenue Allocation Formula, stating that it is long overdue.
Okechukwu described the planned review as a “Win-Win- Balanced Federalism via fiscal restructuring,” especially now that we are altering our Constitution.
He said, “My observation over the last decades informed that the political banditry, ultra-nepotism and tension-soaked presidential election in our dear fatherland is largely due to unbalanced federalism. And unbalanced federalism is an outlier of a do-or-die struggle of who presides over the huge Oil Revenue (a.k.a. national cake) at the over-centralised federal government.”
Okechukwu said that he agreed wholeheartedly with the RMAFC chairman’s submission that the review of the vertical revenue-sharing formula, which determines how federally collected revenues are shared among the federal, state, and local governments, had been long overdue.
He argued that this 33-year-old revenue formula, comprising 52.68 per cent Federal Government, 26.72 per cent States, 20.60 per cent LGAs, 4.80 per cent Special Funds, 1.00 per cent FCT and Ecological Fund, 1.68 per cent Natural Resources, and 0.50 per cent Stabilisation Fund, is antithetical to development and retrogressive.
When asked why the LGAs should be reduced to only 10 per cent, Okechukwu argued that it had become a practical necessity to stop chasing shadows, since all genuine efforts over the past 25 years to free LGAs from the control of our Emperor Governors, had failed, including the financial autonomy initiative by President Tinubu—which culminated in the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment on July 11, 2024.
He recalled that the revenue allocation review exercise in the past had been controversial and marred by a hate pandemic of ignorant political bandits masquerading as ethno-religious champions.
Okechukwu accordingly appealed to divisive elements and agents of polarisation to sheath their arsenal and acknowledge the gospel truth; that abject poverty, grinding hunger, gross unemployment, crisis of inequality, and palpable insecurity still unfortunately plague all our six geopolitical zones, even those of those who presided over Nigeria for more than 10 years.
He called on President Tinubu, the governors, National and State legislators, and patriots to breathe life into the Constitution with this Win-Win, Balanced Federalism, especially now that we are revising it.
