A compilation of approved budgets by the state’s legislative assemblies has shown that N16.15 trillion would be spent by the 36 states, excluding the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), in 2024.
The data gathered by The ICIR showed that this is an increase from N11.17 trillion approved by the 36 states in 2023.
In April, the Minister of FCT, Nyesom Wike, disclosed in an interview that N1.15 trillion was approved by the president for the capital state. This budget breakdown is N280 billion for overhead cost, N729 billion for capital expenditure and N140 billion for personnel cost.
The ICIR has also reported how the federal government had approved N28.7 trillion as fiscal expenditure for 2024. This represents a 4.36 per cent increase from the N27.5 trillion proposed to the National Assembly in November 2023.
States proposed and approved budget
A previous analysis by The ICIR showed that 32 states proposed N14.04 trillion as the budget for 2024. This was excluding Zamfara, Ondo, Niger and Kastina states, at the time of filing the report.
Findings from media reports show that Zamafara state proposed N423.5 billion, Ondo with N384.5 billion, Niger with N613.3 billion and Kastina state with N454.3 billion. This brings the total proposed budget of the 36 states to N15.92 trillion.
By this, the total proposed budget was increased by 1.44 per cent over the total approved budget by the states. However, only a few states had their original budget increased.
Meanwhile, there are concerns that most budgets presented would run majorly on a deficit. This is because some state generates very low Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and depend majorly on either federal government allocation (FAAC) or multilateral loans for financial institutions like the World Bank, IMF, AfDB and others.
2024 approved budget by states
Lagos states had the highest appropriation for the year with 2.2 trillion as approved budget. The budget is almost equivalent to the budget of River, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe, Zamfara and Plateau states combined.
It represents about 14.04 per cent of the total budget for the 36 states.
Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Delta and Ogun states followed after Lagos with N850 billion, N793.5 billion, N725 billion and N703 billion respectively.
A close check by The ICIR showed that 21 state assemblies approved the original budget presented by the governor. That is the proposed and approved budgets were the same without any adjustment to the figures.
These states are Abia, Adamawa, Anambra, Bauchi, Benue, Ebonyi, Ekiti, Enugu, Imo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Lagos, Nassarawa, Niger, Ogun, Osun, Sokoto and Yobe state.
Meanwhile, while other states dropped the approved budget by some significant percentage, only Delta, Kwara and Rivers states increased their approved budget when compared to the proposed amount.
The states with the lowest approved budget are Ekiti with N159.6 billion, Nasarawa with N199.9 billion, Ebonyi with N202.1 billion, Gombe with N208.1 billion and Yobe state with N217.0 billion.
Per capita allocation
The ICIR further analysed the states’ budget allocation by per capita expenditure, which shows how much each state will spend on its citizens based on the amount budgeted and the estimated population.
The data shows that N76,021 would be spent on every citizen in 2024. The project population of Nigeria, is 212.48 million, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
However, this per capita expenditure varies from state to state. Bayalesa has the highest per capita share with N193,739. It is followed by Akwa Ibom, Lagos, Abia and Delta, with N171,240, N168,823, N137,729 and 129.239 respectively for each citizen in their states.
The least with the least per capita expenditure are Kano, Bauchi, Benue and Jigawa states.
The Acting Head of Open Government and Institutional Partnership, BudgIT, Iyanu Bolarinwa, had told The ICIR that most states could not fund their budget due to a lack of capital investments in foreign exchange.
He said, “By the time you remove IGR from a state, you will discover that some states cannot pay for recurrent expenditure, let alone capital expenditure. Many states believe that they can increase IGR by taxation, but when you do not expand the purchasing power of people through investment, you reduce the number of people you can tax.”
Kehinde Ogunyale tells stories by using data to hold power into account. You can send him a mail at jameskennyogunyale@gmail or Twitter: Prof_KennyJames | LinkedIn: Kehinde Ogunyale