FG, states, others share N1.9trn in 3 months

The Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) disbursed N1.938 trillion in the first quarter of 2018. The amount shared represented an increase of 37.3 per cent when compared with N1.411 trillion shared during the same period in 2017 and 71.1 per cent of the N1.132 trillion shared in the same quarter of 2016, Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), has said. In a statement by Director, Communications and Advocacy, NEITI, Dr. Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, the federal government received N812.8 billion, the states got N683.4 billion, while N393.3billion went to the 774 Local Governments Areas. According to the latest edition of the NEITI Quarterly Review, a further breakdown showed that N655.2 billion was disbursed by FAAC in January, N635.6 billion in February, and N647.4 billion in March this year.
In spite of increasing trends in the revenue disbursements to the three tiers of governments, disbursement for the first quarter of 2018 was 25.6 per cent llower than the N2.6 trillion disbursed during the same period in 2013 before the crash in global oil prices.
The report revealed that Akwa Ibom got the highest amount of N50.44 billion while Osun State received the lowest net share of N4.99 billion, a variance of 920 per cent between the highest and the lowest. The report explained that these disparities in FAAC disbursements suggest diff erences in revenue capacities of different states and the implications for expenditure decisions in the affected states. The report noted that the budget of all states completely outstrips their projected total revenues.
However, in about 18 states, projected revenue is less than 40 per cent of budgets. Examples are in the 2018 budgets of Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bauchi, Benue, Borno, Cross River and Ebonyi states. Other states are Imo, Katsina, Kebbi, Kwara, Ogun, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Sokoto and Zamfara). In particular, the NEITI report described the situation in Cross River State as chronic as its projected total revenue only constitutes 4 per cent of the proposed budget.

 

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