The Senate last Thursday approved allocation of three percent of Value Added Tax (VAT), accruable to the Federal Government over the next 10-year period to the rebuilding of the North-East. This no doubt represents a quantum leap in government’s resolve to establish the North-East Development Commission (NEDC), which bill was introduced to the National Assembly on October 8, last year. Senator Kabiru Gaya, who introduced the North- East Development Commission (NEDC SB. 163)) Bill, had painted a pathetic, gory picture of the North East orchestrated by Boko Haram insurgency when he said about 15,000 people lost their lives to the devastation, while roughly five million others scattered across various camps in the country, Niger Republic, Cameroon and Chad, ended up as internally displaced persons (IDPs).
The Bill sponsored by the Senate Majority Leader, Senator Ali Ndume and co-sponsored by seventeen oth¬er members of the North-East Senate Caucus passed through second reading in the Senate last December.
Chairman of the North-East Senate Caucus, Senator Danjuma Goje, had earlier told the media ahead of the Bill’s presenta¬tion to the Senate that the Com¬mission, when established, would be charged with the responsibility of receiving and man¬aging funds’ allocation from the Federation Account and international donors for the settlement, rehabilitation and reconstruction of roads, houses and business prem¬ises of victims of insurgency, as well as tackling the menace of poverty, literacy level, eco-logical problems and other challenges related to development and the environment in North-East states.
However, by June this year, when the Bill was to scale through the third reading, two key contentious issues concerning revenue allocation and the location of the headquarters of the Commission when eventually established stalled its consideration, no thanks to needless bickering by mainly lawmakers from the same North East on the matter. The Senate Committee on Special Duties had proposed that the Commission’s headquarters be located in Abuja, a recommendation that was vehemently opposed by naysayers that preferred Bauchi, Gombe or Borno states instead. Controversial was the proposal that 15 percent of federal allocation to every North East state be deducted at source for funding the Commission. A proposal that 50 percent of ecological fund meant for each of the six North- East states be deducted at source for the funding of the Commission was equally rejected by the Senate, all culminating in disagreements that compelled the upper legislature to suspend the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill, and the setting up of an ad hoc committee to resolve the issues being disputed. Chairman of the committee, Senator Sam Egwu, was quoted as saying last Thursday that his committee had resolved all the grey areas on funding the proposed Commission. According to him, “the committee reviewed and agreed with the funding arrangement that was proposed in the Bill but for the aspect that sought five percent of federal VAT without a time frame.
Consequently, the committee reviewed the amount to five per cent of the federal VAT for the period of 10 years that will serve as intervention from the Federal Government”. Part of Egwu’s committee’s recommendation was that funding of the Commission would also include 15 percent of federal allocations accruing to the six North-East states; as well as 50 percent deduction of the ecological funds of the six states. On adopting the recommendations, the Senate referred the Bill to the Committee on Special Duties chaired by Senator Murtala Nyako.
That the South-East, particularly those portions savagely ruined by Boko Haram, is in dire need of reconstruction and rehabilitation needs no strenuous reiteration, particularly on the backdrop of reports that the FG has largely incapacitated the Boko Haram insurgent group.
We guess it was for this reason that President Muhammadu Buhari earlier picked Lt.-Gen Theophilus Danjuma (rtd) to head a committee charged with the rehabilitation of infrastructure and resettlement of IDPs in the area. President Buhari had stated that when inaugurated, all forms of assistance and aid needed for the task, whether generated locally or from foreign countries as promised by the Group of Seven of Industrialized Countries (G7), would be channelled through the committee; and that a list of damaged infrastructure had been handed to the G7 leaders. “I didn’t ask for a kobo (in cash). It is up to them to choose what they will undertake. Already, some of them have sent teams to verify our assertions”, Buhari stated.
However, the establishment of the North East Development Commission if expedited would convey to the world the message that Nigeria is better organised and ready to tackle the challenges of rebuilding the North East.
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