The Federal Government announced that it has developed software to improve transparency in revenue generation and distribution among the three levels of government.
According to NAN, Mr. Mohammed Shehu, Chairman of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), who made the announcement in an Interview on Sunday, said the software will facilitate one of the commission’s primary functions, which is periodically reviewing the revenue allocation formula across the entire federation.
He said, “There is the vertical revenue allocation formula; who gets what percentage – Federal, State or Local Government (LG).
“There is also the horizontal formula; how do you share that percentage among states and LGs?
“That means you have to consider factors like population, school enrollment, land mass, hospital beds; these are some of the indices.
“Previously, what we did was to request for the required information manually, and then the commission will go and do the inspection manually.”
He said the commission also got data from relevant agencies like the Office of the Statistician-General of the Federation and the National Boundary Commission.
“We now have software through which the states and LGs will input the required data. They have a passcode.
“We will collect the data that they sent, analyse it and also send our team for verification, and then we will agree on how that horizontal formula will be,” he said.
Chairman Shehu further stressed the importance of technology in this process and highlighted the commission’s efforts to establish a data bank for monitoring revenue-generating agencies in real-time.
He called for the collaboration of all revenue-generating agencies in enhancing the effective deployment of government revenue by leveraging technology to save time and minimize revenue leaks.