33 states not viable without federal allocation – BudgIT

THIRTY-THREE out of 36 States that make up Nigeria lack internally generated revenue (IGR) stream to finance their recurrent expenditures without monthly allocation coming to them from Federal Government.

  A social enterprise watchdog with special focus on accountability and transparency in governance, BudgIT, disclosed this in a report titled “State of Nigerian States 2019” which it released in Abuja, yesterday.

  Stating that many states would be affected if oil price fluctuations forces federal allocation to reduce, the report warned that states continue to rely heavily on federal allocation at their perils.

  According to Lead Researcher of BudgIT, Orji Uche only 19 states could source their expenditure within the gamut of their IGR and federal allocation, going further to explain that only Lagos, Rivers and Akwa Ibom States could finance their recurrent expenditure independent of federal allocation.

  Uche stated this while fielding questions from newsmen on the report.

  “The implications of looking at this index is to enable us understand without federal allocation, how many states can sustain themselves. 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 federal allocation to reduce, then many states would be in jeopardy,” she said.

  The report also gave Anambra a clean bill of health as one of the states that is not only financially viable since March 2014, but indeed a model for others to emulate.