Engr. Elias Mbam, Chairman of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) during the question and answer session at the presentation of the  report of  Inter-Agency Technical Committee on the implementation of the Supreme Court judgment in the suit between Rivers and Akwa Ibom states in Abuja penultimate Thursday, bares his mind on the challenges confronting the commission, legislators’ remuneration, the commission’s stand on the disputed 86 oil wells and many more as captured by Favour Nnabugwu.

Excerpt:

Legislators take-home:

The remuneration package of legislators is in the public domain and also in our website. The highest a Senator can collect is about N1.06 million per month. The House of Representatives members collect less than that. All these include the basic salaries and all other allowances except for the periodic allowance paid to them.

Any other payment as emoluments more than this is not known to the commission. Like l have always advised, if you can confirm what you hear about the jumbo salaries of the legislators beyond what l have told you, please direct your question to the Accounting officer of the National Assembly who in this case is the Clerk of the House. What we approved and what they are paid as emolument is N1.06 million for Senators and less for members of the House of Representatives.

What is the state of the review of revenue sharing formula?

You will recall that within 30 days of our inauguration and assumption of office, I constituted a standing committee to review the revenue allocation formula. The committee has commenced work and has done all the planning. I will like to say that preparation of the new revenue formula is a very serious business.

It requires a lot of documentation, a lot of data, research and consultations and is only when all these are properly done that the public will be informed of an equitable, fair, and just new revenue allocation formula.

We have commenced and very soon, we will call for memoranda and the Press will be aware because we will kick-start it with a Press conference. We are programming that by January 2012, we will have a new revenue allocation formula.

What is the next line of action on the disputed 86 oil wells?

The commission will hold a plenary meeting and consider the report and thereafter forward our decision to the Accountant-General of the Federation for immediate implementation.

What is going to be the commercial interest rate on the N10.91billion?

You will recall that the report was not ready as at last month. The committee requested for extra two weeks to complete the report because of the sensitivity of the issue. We decided to escrow the revenue that accrued from those wells. If you follow closely the report in the dailies, you will find out that we are already being criticised that we are holding onto people’s funds; that we are intentionally delaying the funds and all that.

But we wanted to do a thorough job and having reached this stage, we do not want to keep people’s money any longer than necessary in the escrow account so we are going to apply what is available and when we get the report from the Central Bank of Nigeria on the appropriate commercial interest rate on the N10.91billion, we will compute and also forward same to the Accountant-General of the Federation. The interest rate will be computed when the CBN provides us with the appropriate commercial interest rate within that period – April 2009 to April 2011 – in line with the directive of the Supreme Court.

Will your commission re-present the civil servant remuneration bill?

You will rightly recall that there was a bill in 2009 on the review of remuneration and as at then, any bill that did not pass before the expiration of the sixth assembly has to be re-presented. If you observed carefully, a lot of things happened between 2009 and now. Notwithstanding, we have a standing committee on remuneration but we are not necessarily going to re-present that bill because a lot of changes have taken place. The committee will look at prevailing realities on ground and advise us if the remuneration should be reviewed upward or downward. We can re-present that bill as it was. The civil servants’ minimum wage has been increased to

N18, 000 from the old salary. The committee will advise us on that. The problem we have most times is that we are not given time by the general public. It sounds so simple that remuneration can be changed with a stroke of the pen whereas it is not done that way because we have to analyse what the civil servant received, what the executive received and what is applicable in other similar federation and not until all that is done will we be able to advise on the next line of action.

Senators’ plan to change loan to grant..

A loan is a loan. If it is a loan, the implication thereof is obvious. The question of changing the loan to something else, I don’t know about it and if they are deciding on something else, the commission is not aware of that. But as far as we are concerned, the Act has not been amended. And the Act specifically defines their entitlement and until the Act is amended, we are not in a position to alter the provision of the Act.

How is the commission to recover the loan?

We have some limitations here. We do not have enforcement power as a commission. If we say this is what should be done, the Chief Accounting Officer should be asked whether it was done and if not, why?