Daily Independent Online.
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Friday, July 02, 2004.
NEC proposes to
reconcile FG, Lagos
By Gbenga Abiodun
State
House,
Abuja
The National Executive Council (NEC),
chaired by Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar has proposed the establishment of a
joint Lagos State and Federal Government’s committee to resolve all areas
of differences between the two tiers of government.
At its Thursday meeting in Abuja, the
council also took a number of decisions including a directive on the Revenue
Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission, to submit its final report on the new
revenue sharing formula to the president for onward transmission to the
National Assembly before the next meeting of NEC.
While, briefing State House Correspondents
at the end of the meeting, Ondo State Governor, Chief Segun Agagu, also said
the council agreed that all monies owed by states and local governments that
were not remitted on withholding tax and Value Added Tax into the federation
accounts be paid immediately into the account while all outstanding accounts be
reconciled with the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission.
According to Agagu, “a final
reconciliation was presented to council today (Thursday) and a decision was
taken that payment must be made both for monies that had been owed in the past
five or 10 years for those payments to be made within the next 12 months, so as
to ensure that states don’t get crippled, if such debts are removed at
once from source and that henceforth, they all pledged to remit as and when
due.”
On the feud between Lagos State government
and the Federal Government over a number of issues, Agagu said at the instance
of the Federal Government, the council thought all the area of disputes should
be immediately resolved.
“Several cases are in court between
the two tiers of government and the council felt that this is not healthy for
the nation. At the initiative of the Federal Government, a proposal was brought
to council that a committee should be formed jointly between the federal and
Lagos state governments to annually resolve all these disputes”.
