By Ibrahim HassanWuyo

To make Local Government Areas more meaningful and lead to people’s prosperity, experts on restructuring from the Alter Consult have suggested that 43 per cent of revenue generated from localities should go to the third tier of government.

Alter Consult is a financial and management consulting firm with membership drawn from across Nigeria.

The experts argued that the local councils would use such monies meaningfully on essential projects since they were much closer to the people.

While making a presentation in Kaduna, one of the experts, Friday A. Agbo, explained that apart from meaningful impact that will eliminate crime, such monies in the hands of local authorities could lead to prosperity in Nigeria,

Alter Consult gave the suggestion at a Technical Session on An Alternative Model on Restructuring Taxation Tool for Economic Diversity and Good Governance in Kaduna.

While presenting a paper on the above theme at the session, an expert, Mr Agbo said that every local government area was unique and had something to offer if allowed to develop its potentials.

“43% of VAT or revenue should go to the local government areas,” he said.

“If that is done, the management and staff of LGAs would be more committed and ensure that businesses thrives,” he said

“33% of the VAT and revenue collected from LGAs should go to State government, while the FG should get 23 per cent, with one per cent for the CBN.”

“On the other hand, 23%, 33% and 43% should be allocated for VAT and revenue collected at Federal Level for LGAs, states and FG respectively,” he said.

Agbo said that LGAs should benefit from any activity in its area, in spite of where the head office of the business outfit is located.

The author  of a book, the  “Political Economy & Taxation as a Practical Systemic Platform For Good Governance,” said that looking inwards can make local government areas self sufficient.

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He said the state government can harmonise the resources from all the local government areas to make them unique.

He expressed optimism that local government areas could on their own survive by developing resources in their areas.

He suggested that synergy should be in place between the LGAs, states and Federal Government’ as well as the CBN in terms of policies and procedures.

He said that such synergy will lead to reduction of costs of running government by eliminating duplication of parastatals or ministry, through reducing size of government.

He said there are 774 LGAs and each has a particular area that it is good at.

“Such synergy will ensure that the products in Nigeria can get to the end of the world without the producers being multinationals.

“The North produces water melon what stops the product from reaching US?

“The technology used should be developed locally. If you import technology, it might not be compatible,” he stressed.

The expert warned that government has no business in doing business, but provide conducive environment for private investors to do business and tax them.

“Nigeria should adopt mix economic system and unified tax system to maintain separation of powers and at the same time, create synergy among the direct levels of government.

“All government parastatals and enterprises should be commercialized and privatized respectively to produce conducive environment,” he said.

Vanguard