FG, states, councils share N2 trillion in three months

No fewer than N1.95 trillion was shared by the federal, state and local governments from the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) in the first quarter of this year.

A quarterly report of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) released yesterday in Abuja showed that the allocations under review were highest to be shared same period since President Muhammadu Buhari came to office in 2015.

Amid the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pestilence with the accompanying lockdowns globally, N791.4 billion of the funds went to the Federal Government, N669 billion was shared by the states, while N395 billion went to the 774 council areas.

The balance was received by the North East Development Commission, the Excess Crude Account, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR).

Predicting that disbursements for the rest of the year could be drastically affected by the downturn in the global economy on account of the ravaging coronavirus, NEITI stated: “Total disbursements were N1.648 trillion in first quarter 2015; N1.132 trillion in the first quarter of 2016; N1.411 trillion in first quarter 2017; N1.938 trillion in the first quarter of 2018, and N1.929 trillion in first quarter 2019.”

In the payments to states between January and March this year, Osun got the lowest allocation of N6.44 billion as against Delta that received the highest allocation of N52.03 billion, representing a 708 per cent difference.

Furthermore, the combined total net disbursements of N50.67 billion of the six lowest receiving states, comprising Osun, Cross River, Plateau, Ogun, Ekiti and Gombe, were lower than the N52 billion receipt of the South-South state.

The document noted that the total sum of Delta, Akwa Ibom, Rivers and Bayelsa was higher than the combined net disbursements for the 17 states with the lowest votes.

The review added: “The combined total net disbursements to these four states were N167.76 billion. This figure is higher than the combined total of N159.99 billion received by the 17 lowest receiving states (Osun, Cross River, Plateau, Ogun, Ekiti, Gombe, Zamfara, Kwara, Nasarawa, Ebonyi, Taraba, Benue, Adamawa, Bauchi, Abia, and Kogi).”

According to the transparency body, 31 states received less than N20 billion as total net FAAC disbursements in the first quarter of 2020, just as only five states got more than N20 billion.

The states are Lagos (N26.23 billion); Bayelsa (N35.14 billion); Rivers (N39.99 billion); Akwa Ibom (N40.61 billion) and Delta (N52.03 billion).

NEITI added that the projected revenue for the Federal Government for the year was N8.42 trillion, consisting of oil revenue of N2.64 trillion, non-oil revenue of N1.81 trillion and revenue from other sources put at N3.97 trillion.