The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission has begun consultation with stakeholders with a view to reviewing public office holders pay.
As such, the agency said it would engage critical stakeholders to determine if the remuneration for political, public and judicial officeholders should be increased or decreased.
In a telephone conversation with our correspondent on Friday, the commission’s spokesperson, Nwachukwu Christian, however, said Nigerians should disregard any news claiming the agency was planning to increase the salaries of political, public and judicial office holders.
He said, “The process involves consultation. It is not what one person will do. We must consult critical stakeholders like civil society organisations. We must consult even traditional rulers. It will take us across the whole federation to gather input on it. At the end of the whole thing, what we gather will decide if the review will be upward or downward.
“We have not carried out the exercise. We are in the process, and this process must be carried out and completed and will give us the result whether it is going to be up or down. Nobody can come up now to say RMAFC has reviewed upward the salaries of political and judicial officers. That’s false. Until the process is concluded before we can decide on the review.
“In the course of the process, people will air their views on where the country is now. Nigerians must make their input because it is their money that will be used to pay these officeholders. So, we have to consider their inputs.”
Earlier, the commission had, in a statement, said that it would begin the process of reviewing the remuneration for political, public and judicial office holders in the country.
The statement read in part, “Mohammed Shehu [who is the current chairman of the Commission] pointed out that pursuant to the functions of RMAFC in paragraph 32(D) of part 1 to the third schedule of 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended, empowers the Commission to determine the remuneration appropriate to political, public and judicial office holders in the country informing that the last time the review was carried out was 2008 which makes it even overdue for review.”
In June last year, the former Chairman of RMAFC, Elias Mbam, said the commission had completed plans to begin the review of the revenue allocation formula.
The review was targeted at the equitable distribution of the accrued revenue into the Federation Account to the three tiers of government and it was to be concluded before the end of 2021.
However, the commission failed to meet its deadline in 2021 and ended up submitting its report on the review of the vertical revenue allocation formula to the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), in April this year.
In the report, the proposed vertical revenue allocation formula was 45.17 per cent for the Federal Government, 29.79 per cent for state governments and 21.04 per cent for the local governments.
