HUMAN rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Olisa Agbakoba, says Nigeria can generate enough revenue to guarantee annual distributable funds of between N15 trillion to N20 trillion to all tiers of government.
Agbakoba, a Senior Partner, Olisa Agbakoba Legal (OAL) Centre for Petroleum Governance & Regulatory and Policy Advisory Practice stated this on Wednesday at a news conference in Lagos.
The theme of the conference is: “The Federation Account of Nigeria and Infinite Possibilities when the Framework is Put Right: A Framework for Full Remittance and Fiscal Accountability.”
Speaking on a paper focusing on fiscal policy reform, Agbakoba stressed the need to fully implement section 162 of the constitution to make its obligations clear, binding and enforceable.
He said Section 162 (1) of the Constitution provided that the Federation shall maintain a special account to be called the Federation Account into which shall be paid all revenues collected by the government of the Federation.
Agbakoba, a former president of the Nigeria Bar Association, said that by current estimates, Nigeria is losing up to N20 trillion yearly in revenues because the provision of Section 162 was not being followed.
The lawyer added that these were revenues that should be entering the Federation Account but never arrived.
“The solution is to fully implement Section 162 by amending the Constitution to make its obligations clear, binding, and enforceable.
“OAL proposes the following constitutional amendment: All revenues accruing to the Federation shall be paid into the Federation Account in gross, and no deductions, costs, charges, or offsets of any nature shall be made prior to such payment.
“All costs and expenditure relating to the generation of such revenues shall be appropriated by the National Assembly and disbursed only after remittance into the Federation Account.
“No executive instrument, administrative direction, or government policy shall establish or maintain any account as a substitute for or equivalent to the Federation Account established by this section.”
Agbakoba said that if the amendment is passed and enforced, it would solve the problem of leakages at the source.
He said that every naira collected by the Federal government would go into the Federation Account first, before anyone touched it.
According to him, costs and expenses will be paid out afterwards, through the proper budget process, in full public view.
“The direct consequence will be that Nigeria will need to borrow far less. Today, debt service is consuming so much of the Federal revenue.
“That is money that cannot build roads, hospitals, or schools because it goes to service debts that should never have been necessary in the first place.
“This is because the revenues to fund government are always there. They were simply not arriving where the Constitution says they should.”
Agbakoba said that If the debt burden comes down, everybody would benefit from it, adding that businesses would grow more, states could deliver greater services and families could breathe better.
He said Nigeria needed a system that ensured that what it already produced would reach the account it already has, saying, “that’s what the policy paper is about”. (NAN)
