Adewale Sanyaolu
The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) said the three tiers of Government; Federal, State and Local Governments shared a total of N8.15 trillion from statutory receipts of the Federation Accounts and Allocation Committee (FAAC) in 2019.
The figures are contained in the latest edition of the NEITI Quarterly Review released in Abuja, yesterday.
This figure according to NEITI is N377 billion or 4.42 per cent lower than the 2018 figure of N8.524 trillion, but N1.728 trillion or 26.92 per cent higher than the total disbursements of N6.419 trillion made in 2017.
Of this amount, the Federal Government received N3.37 trillion, representing 41.4 per cent of total disbursements; the 36 states got N2.761 trillion (33.9 per cent) while the 774 local governments shared N1.649 trillion (20.2 per cent) of the total disbursements.
The publication which examined FAAC disbursements to the Federal, States and Local governments in 2019, compared the disbursements of the previous years and made projections for the year 2020.
From the publication, and in line with the revenue sharing formula, the Federal Government received the highest disbursements from FAAC, while local governments got the lowest.
It further disclosed that revenue shared to the three tiers of government in the two previous years of 2018 and 2017 followed the same pattern. “For 2018, total disbursements to the Federal Government, states, and local governments were N3.483 trillion, N2.850 trillion, and N1.667 trillion, respectively. For 2017, disbursements were N2.563 trillion, N1.859 trillion to states, and N1.502 trillion to local governments”.
A comparative analysis of the disbursements made by FAAC to the federation in 2019 as against the sharing in the two previous years of 2017 and 2018 shows that the total disbursements to the Federal Government in 2019 were 3.08 per cent lower than the disbursements in 2018, but 31.69 per cent higher than those in 2017.
Also, while the disbursements to the states in 2019 were 3.12 per cent lower than those in 2018, they were 48.54 per cent higher than those in 2017. The scenario was the same for the local governments in 2019, as their disbursements were 1.08 per cent lower than those in 2018, but 9.75 per cent higher than what was recorded in 2017.
The NEITI Quarterly Review compared total FAAC disbursements between 2013 and 2019 and revealed that “The total disbursements fell in three consecutive years from 2013 to 2016. Thereafter, total disbursements increased until 2018. However, the increase in total disbursements stopped in 2019, as there was a decrease in 2019 over 2018 figures”.
The Report further disclosed that over the seven-year period (2013 – 2019), 2013 recorded the highest disbursements of N9.742 trillion, followed by 2014 (N8.595trillion). 2018 came third with N8.524 trillion while 2019 had the fourth highest disbursements of N8.147 trillion.
During the same period (2013-2019), 2019 witnessed the lowest percentage decline in disbursements (-4.42 per cent) while 2018 had the highest percentage increase of 32.8 per cent.
The report identified a general rising trend in FAAC disbursements from the beginning of the year to about August 2019 when disbursements either fell slightly or remained relatively stable.