Federation Account overstretched —RMAFC

Nigeria’s Federation Account is overstressed, the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) said on Monday.

The RMAFC’s revelation derived from heavy pressure on the Federation Account from the federal, state and local governments.

Elias Mbam, Chairman of the RMAFC, said it was time Nigeria began to ease the stress on the account as he enjoined state governments to develop blueprints to boost their Internally Generated Revenues (IGR).

The RMAFC chief made the disclosure in his office in Abuja while receiving an Annual States Viability Index (ASVI) report from the Editor-in-Chief of the Economic Confidential, Yushau Shuaib.

“The Federation Account allocation is overstressed by the over-dependence of the tiers of government and hence the need for state governments to develop strategies to boost their internal revenues,” Mr Mbiam said.

He stated that the ASVI would provide a good source of information to the public, saying the report would drive the RMAFC on its mandate to motivate Nigerian states to improve their IGR.

“I have come to realise that Economic Confidential has become a household name and its reports that are factual and authoritative should be useful, especially in guiding states whose revenues keep dwindling so that they can improve.”

In explaining the content of the report, Shuaib said the ASVI evaluated and ranked states according to their IGR in comparison to their receipts from the Federation Account allocation.

Read also: NNPC remits N1.8trn into Federation Account in one year

He observed that the report indicated that many states in the country could not survive without monthly disbursement from the Federation Account.

The indices in the ASVI, Shuaib said, revealed that at least five states were insolvent as a result of very poor IGRs that were far below 10 per cent of their receipts from the Federation Account.

The five states, which also recorded the worst IGR performance in 2019, were Katsina, Borno, Kebbi, Bayelsa and Taraba.

According to him, apart from Lagos and Ogun States that ranked high in revenue generation in 2019, more states reported encouraging IGR during the year compared to 2018.

The report revealed that Rivers, Enugu, Kwara, Kaduna and Zamfara performed well in revenue generation as they recorded over 10 per cent improvement.

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