REVENUE GENERATION FORMULA

Aliyu In his enviable capacity as Chairman of the 19 Northern Governors' Forum, the Niger State Governor, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, advocated a review of the country's present revenue allocation formula, 'to reflect current realities.'

As the print media reported on February 24, after inauguration of the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation at Abuja, the outspoken and amiable Aliyu, 'described as unfair , a situation where a State like Niger got between N4.2 billion and N4.5 billion as monthly allocation while some other States received 20 times the amount,' (The Punch, Feb. 24, p.7).

Talking like a power-filled prefect from the northern climes, the Governor stated that he and his colleagues up there 'hoped that the revenue allocation formula should be looked at. We are hoping that within 2012, there would be discussions and review of the allocation formula. But there are other issues that would come. For example, there were oil wells that were over 200 kilometers away of the shore of the country. Those ones before the passage of the law by the National Assembly were supposed to be oil wells for the whole country.

But now, they have been made to be given only to the contiguous state, in addition to the 13 per cent deviation.

So if you look at that, you will say that it will not serve everybody well if certain parts of the country are not doing well while some parts are doing exceptionally well. So, the pressure will continue until we are able to find a solution.'

Dr. Aliyu has succeeded, as far as one is concerned, in raising one of the critical issues that would have been raised at a Sovereign National Conference (SNC), if one were convened by the central authorities of this country between 1975 and now, and that is the revenue allocation formula. Obviously, there were other more pressing matters such as the adoption of another constitution which the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) and the Constituent Assembly (post- General Ramat Murtala Mahammed), worked upon to give Nigeria the framework for all the country's constitutional documents since then (1979, 1989, 1999 and the recently amended one).

This assignment is not intended at debating any of the points raised by the Governor, but drawing attention to the fact that with or without a sovereign conference, the imperatives of peaceful co-existence; mutual understanding and political communication demand that the country's leadership and followership need to be discussing all issues, including the contentious or volatile ones like this, regularly.

The alternative - talking with bullets, bombs, daggers and insolent remarks - are unbecoming of any modern State, especially those whose citizens may later discover that they have umbilical cords which may not make it easy for them to individually get detached from the geo-political corpus. Although the idea of a Sovereign Conference was last month officially thrown out of the political window by both President Goodluck Jonathan and the National Assembly, the fact remains that with some creativity in the areas of political communication and public affairs, the type of 'discussions' which Governor Aliyu hoped could lead to a 'review of the allocation formula', can still very well occur.

After all, all those existing civil society groups; intellectually rooted parastatals, political parties and various interest groups in the country, should feel eminently capable of organizing forums, debates, lectures, symposia, conferences and colloquia etc. on the desirable revenue allocation formula and other issues for the country, depending on their competence fields. In fact, a sovereign national conference may well present a peculiar problem at this time. For example, in an interview published by the Vanguard on January 23, 2006 (p.34), Chief Anthony Enahoro, an arrow-head of democracy and the sovereign conference, said: '……..It is a vital aspect of the PRONACO approach that the options should be explained to the public, and that the decisions of the conference should be submitted to a popular referendum.'

In other words, a referendum is a desideratum for any sovereign national conference, otherwise it would just have been just another talk-shop, or 'jaw-jaw session', with which advocates of the conference said they were already fed up. Now, who will organize the referendum: Is it not the Government of the day? And who will explain the 'options' to the public: The Minister of Information; Director-General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), or organizers of the conference, to give it a national appeal and impact?

And how easy is it, under the present political circumstances, to organize or hold a referendum, with some people thinking of gaining eternal life by bombing their much-hated fellow human beings out of existence? Therefore, new and security-sanitized strategies of mentally tackling national problems need to be devised, outside the conference idea.

However, one's interest in this topic arose not from the conference angle as such, but out of surprise that Governor Aliyu focused solely on oil revenue, as if Niger State has no mineral resources of its own, from which revenues that can also be put into the centrally distributable pool (like oil), may be derived.

After all, are 'mines and minerals, including oil fields, oil mining, geological surveys and natural gas', not all under Part I of the constitution's Second Schedule?And are Gold, located in Minna; Kafinkoro, Kontagora, Bida and New Bussa; marble; tantalite, columbite and Silica (in Suleja and Bida) not part of the Niger State's many mineral resources?

As they are on the exclusive list (like oil), anyone now mining them is doing so illegally and Governor Aliyu should report them to President Jonathan and the EFCC, for appropriate treatment as economic saboteurs. The prisons - not hospital beds -  are waiting for people like them!!!

Indeed, we should be talking more about boosting the country's revenue generation profile, rather than raising blood pressure levels with toppling a revenue allocation plan in existence for 13 years, or setting about changing it through dialogue, as Governor Aliyu has rightly done in his advocacy.

To Governor Aliyu and his hard-working colleagues up there, let me conclude by embellishing one of President John F. Kennedy's most famous quotes: 'Your Excellencies, ask not what more oil-based revenues should be allocated to you, but how you can also strengthen the Union, by generating more internal revenues for sharing.' Chikena!