Niger State Governor, Babangida Aliyu, has said that the federal revenue formula should be reviewed in 2012 as it is presently unfavourable to the northern part of the country.
Aliyu, who made this remark yesterday while inaugurating an advisory council for the Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation, said that, in addition to the 13 per cent derivation, there are oil wells off the shores of the country which should belong to the federal government but have been given to the contiguous state in the Niger Delta.
The governor contended that it would not serve anybody any good? if one part of the country was doing very well while the other was not.
Inaugurating the committee headed by a former president of the Court of Appeal, Mamman Nasir, Aliyu said: “The circumstance of the North today is a very grave situation where illiteracy, poverty, ignorance and general backwardness are on the rise, in the face of an unfavourable federation allocation structure in which the northern states are at a great disadvantage.
“Each one of us must therefore begin to change our mindset from parasitic and consumptive tendencies towards what we can do productively to contribute to the economic development of the region; otherwise, we shall forever continue to lag behind.”