A civic tech organisation monitoring budgeting in Nigeria, BudgIT, has said only three Nigerian states – Lagos, Rivers and Akwa Ibom can fund their expenditure without federal allocations.
Orji Uche, BudgIT’s lead researcher in a report titled “State of states 2019″, explained that 33 other states in the country cannot finance their recurrent expenditure without federal allocations, adding that many states would have financial challenges if the federal allocation stop coming.
The report said that only 19 states can fund their expenditure with internally generated revenue and federal allocation, TheCable reports.
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“The implications of looking at this index is to enable us to understand without federal allocation, how many states can sustain themselves,” she said.
“And by sustaining themselves, we are looking only at the recurrent expenditure. Are you going to meet your operating obligations, are you able to pay salaries so that anything coming from federal allocation would go to investments in the key sectors of the economy.
“When we look at the index, we can see that those states that can meet their expenditure only with IGR are only three States out of 36 States.
“What this means is that if they were to be oil price fluctuations and production allocation from the centre were to reduced, then many states would be in jeopardy.”
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