Former Health Minister, Prof Isaac Adewole, has called for fiscal federalism, whereby states that prohibit beer sales should not draw from the common VAT purse from more liberal climes that allow the alcohol consumption.
Several Northern states operating Sharia law forbid the public sale and consumption of alcohol and regularly raid and destroy the products of hotels, bars and other places where hot drinks are sold.
The former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, who was a guest on Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television on Friday, May 31, also asked governors to allow the local government areas to function as an independent tier of government.
Adewole said that while it was too late for a return to regionalism, states should be allowed to grow independently and based on the resources within their domains.
He said: “I am an apostle of fiscal and physical federalism. We need to look at how we share the resources of this country.
“If you have a law that prevents you from selling alcohol, that law should also prevent you from sharing money from alcohol. We should be honest with ourselves. States that prohibit the sale of alcohol should not share out of VAT from alcohol.
“Then we should also ask each state what they are bringing to the table. A situation where states only share money from oil is absurd and that is why we are where we are today because the other states are not bringing anything to the table.
“What is happening to our gold, bitumen, lithium? The resources from all of these, where are they? The only thing we know is oil money.”
