Uche Usim, Abuja
The Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) on Wednesday disclosed that the 36 states of the federation received N3.95trillion as total revenues in 2018 but none of the states could fund their 2018 budget from their total revenue for the year. It said the gap between total revenues and budgets ranged between N28billion in Enugu and N1.2trillion in Cross River. NEITI said the total revenues to the states came from disbursements from the Federation Accounts and Allocation Committee (FAAC) and receipts from Internally Generated Revenues (IGR).
A breakdown of the figure shows that N2.849trillion was from FAAC allocations while N1.103trillion was internally generated revenue (IGR) by the states.
The information is contained in the latest edition of NEITI Quarterly Review titled “Insights from states’ 2018 total revenue profiles”. The publication looked at revenues to the states against their internally generated revenues, FAAC receipts and the implications on their budgets for the year under review.
According to NEITI, “While total FAAC allocations were N2.849 trillion, total deductions were N355.761 meaning that a total of N2.494 trillion represented actual net FAAC disbursements to the states. In 2018, after deductions, the combined total (net) revenue of all states was N3.597 trillion”. The deductions, the review explained were because of external and domestic debts including standing orders hanging on the neck of the affected states.
The analysis, conducted using data obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics, Office of the Accountant General of the Federation and the Fiscal Disbursement Unit of NEITI revealed that Lagos State had the highest total revenue of N501 billion while Osun had the lowest total revenue of N33 billion. This shows that Lagos State’s revenue was higher than that of Osun State by 1,518 per cent. Details of revenues profiles of the States with FAAC and IGR combined are produced below.
The report also carried out a comparative analysis of revenues by the six geo-political zones. The report shows that the South South zone had the highest combined revenue of N1.102 trillion, followed by the South West zone with N887.8 billion. The North West and North Central had the third and fourth highest revenues of N546.5 billion and N378.7 billion while the North East and South East zones had N351.5 billion and N340.1 billion respectively. The review highlighted that the total revenue for South South (N1.10trillion) exceeded the combined revenues for the North Central, North East and South East, which is N1.07trillion. Similarly, the total revenue of Lagos State (N501.2 billion) exceeded total revenue of each of three zones: North Central (N378.7 billion), North East (N351.5 billion), and South East (N340.1 billion).
On internally generated revenues, the NEITI Quarterly Review noted that “Only four states had IGR above N50 billion: Delta, Lagos, Ogun and Rivers states. On the other hand, 13 states had IGR below N10 billion: Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Ebonyi, Ekiti, Gombe, Jigawa, Katsina, Kebbi, Nasarawa, Taraba, Yobe, and Zamfara. In addition, 11 states had IGR between N10 billion and N20 billion: Abia, Anambra, Bayelsa, Benue, Cross River, Imo, Kogi, Niger, Osun, Plateau, and Sokoto States. Eight states had IGR between N20 billion and N50 billion: Akwa Ibom, Edo, Enugu, Kaduna, Kano, Kwara, Ondo and Oyo”
At the zonal level, the South West had the highest IGR of N533billion with Lagos State generating the highest revenue of N382.18 billion. “Lagos State is the dominant player in this regard, with IGR of N382.18 billion. Thus, IGR of Lagos State constituted 34.64 per cent of total IGR of states in 2018”, NEITI reported. This further shows that Lagos State accounted for over 71 per cent of the total IGR of the South West zone.