Absence of 30 commissioners hasn’t grounded our activities – RMAFC boss

The absence 30 commissioners has not grounded the activities of the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), the acting chairman of the commission, Shettima Umar Abba Gana, has said.

He was reacting to a Daily Trust story which revealed that the agency now has only seven commissioners, as against the 38 stipulated by the constitution.

But reacting to of the Daily Trust report, Abba Gana said “since most of the said Commissioners vacated office in November 2015 following the expiration of their respective tenures, their departure has never affected the work of the commission even as the few members that remained on board have continued to discharge their responsibilities without let or hindrance.”

He said “the Act establishing the Commission explicitly stated that only 5 number of Commissioners constitute a quorum and that the 7 remaining members from the different parts of the geopolitical Zones were sufficient to discharge the routine and specific duties related to the statutory mandate of the commission.”

The RMAFC boss however added that it was desirable to have all the Commissioners in place.

“For instance, the Acting Chairman recalled that RMAFC had successfully carried out verification and reconciliation of collections by banks where recoveries totaling over N73 billion were made, while similar exercises on Stamp duty collections and Tax liabilities of the three tiers of government on Withholding Tax (WHT) and VAT yielded N27billion and N168 billion respectively” he said.

Abba Gana added that “the commission as a Member of the Federation Account Allocation Committee and Chair of the Post Mortem Sub Committee has been effectively supervising the disbursement of the statutory monthly allocation including preparing attribution and indices for the 13 percent derivation given to oil-producing states.”