Emma Ujah,  Abuja Bureau Chief 

Members of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, (RMAFC) have called on stakeholders to support the organisation’s quest for financial autonomy. 

They lamented the poor funding of RMAFC and urged good spirited members of the public and especially federal legislators to support the  bill to grant the organisation financial autonomy, which is presently before the Senate.

Financial autonomy, they argued, would guarantee adequate funding to enable the commission carry out its mandate.

Maryam Yusuf, Head, Information, and Public Relations, in a statement in Abuja,  today,  quoted the member representing Benue State, Hon. Samuel Magbe as saying, “The Commission is not well funded.”

The members spoke at the valedictory session for outgoing Commissioners.

“There is a lot of low morale among the staff of the Commission, because when you go out to monitor the activities of FIRS, the Central Bank, and so on, you see that there is a wide disparity between us and them. But I hope that the President will do something about that for this commission to move forward,” Hon. Magbe added.

Another outgoing memberer, Hon. Adebayo Fari, representing Ogun State, said, “One of the major things that has been a challenge here is the  funding of the organisation.

” Aside from that, we have the issue of human capital.   There have been moves by this administration under the leadership of Hon. Mohammed Shehu to actually do a lot of training, but aside from that, I think there is still a need to recruit more hands in  the areas of accounting, statistics, economics and tax administration, so that they can actually build a very big capacity to do their functions very well.”

Hon. Modu Juluri, member representing Yobe State remarked, ” RMAFC should be treated as a federation agency, rather than  a Federal Government agency because the work that is done in RMAFC actually engages all the interests of the federation.”

The chairman of the Commission commended the outgoing l members for their patriotism and commitment to nation-building through their efforts to make the commission  a world class organisation.

He said, “It has been our wish to reposition this Commission to become a worldclass Revenue Mobilisation Commission since we came here, we are still working in progress,  we have tried, we are trying and we will continue to try.”

The Chairman recalled the extraordinary support that they rendered to the Commission through their contributions to the various Committees, despite the fact that RMAFC as an organisation was poorly funded.

The outgoing members were appointed on the 26th of June 2019 for a tenure of 5 years, which expired yesterday.