A report by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has revealed that Federal, State and Local Governments shared a total sum of N3. 879 trillion in the first half of 2020.
In the report released on Tuesday and published on the website of the NEITI, the allocation to the three tiers of government in the first half of 2020 reduced when compared to 2019.
Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, the NEITI Director of Communications and Advocacy in a statement gave a breakdown of the allocations.
According to the statement, the breakdown of the disbursements showed that N1.53 trillion went to the Federal Government, while the states got N1.29 trillion and the 774 local government areas received N771.34 billion.
The Federal government suffered a reduction in its allocation in the first half of 2020 as N1.53 trillion was received which is 4.28 per cent lower than the N1.599 trillion it got in the first half of 2019 and 7.36 per cent lower than the N1.652 trillion it received in the first half of 2018.
The statement further showed that for the states governments, a total of N1.298 trillion was disbursed in the first half of 2020 which was 2.8 per cent lower than the N1.35 trillion disbursed in the first half of 2019, and 5.6 per cent lower than the N1.375 trillion disbursed in the first half of 2020.
“For local government areas, the 2020 first half disbursements were 2.64% and 3.04% lower than the corresponding disbursements for 2019 and 2018 respectively,” the statement read.
According to the statement, among the 36 states, Osun State had the lowest net disbursement of N13.13 billion, while Delta State had the highest net disbursement of N100.81 billion.
Orji noted that the total net disbursements received by Delta State (N100.81 billion) was higher than the combined total net disbursements of N99.47 billion received by six states namely Osun, Cross River, Plateau, Ogun, Gombe and Ekiti.
“Also, the combined total net disbursements of N321.29 billion received by the four highest receiving states of Delta, Akwa Ibom, Rivers, and Bayelsa were higher than the combined total net disbursements of N314.08 billion received by 16 states– Osun, Cross River, Plateau, Ogun, Gombe, Ekiti, Zamfara, Kwara, Nassarawa, Ebonyi, Taraba, Benue, Adamawa, Ondo, Bauchi, and Abia”. While Lagos State had the highest deductions, Yobe State had the lowest.” Orji stated.
“In the months under consideration in 2020, aggregate disbursements fluctuated by large amounts, compared to 2018 and 2019.
“Aggregate disbursements were N716.3 billion in January and this fell to N647.4 billion in February. Thereafter, disbursements fell to N581.6 billion in March, before increasing to N780.9 billion in April. Disbursements then fell to N606.2 billion in May and to N547.3 billion in June.
“These figures indicate differences of N68.9 billion between January and February, N65.7 billion between February and March, N199.3 billion between March and April, N174.7 billion between April and May, and N58.9 billion between May and June.
For comparison, the highest inter-month difference in the first half of 2018 was N62.9 billion, while the corresponding figure for 2019 was N63.5 billion. Thus, there have been very wide fluctuations in aggregate disbursements so far in 2020,” the statement read.
Lukman Abolade is an Investigative reporter with The ICIR. Reach out to him via [email protected], on twitter @AboladeLAA and FB @Correction94